The Supreme Court revives Jim Crow with the latest Voting Rights Act ruling

The Supreme Court on Wednesday delivered a potentially fatal blow to a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, ruling 6-3 that a Louisiana congressional map with a second majority-Black district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

The decision in Louisiana v. Callais imposes a sweeping new standard that legal experts say will make it effectively impossible for racial minorities to challenge discriminatory political maps without proving explicit racist intent — a legal hurdle so high that it threatens to nullify the law’s remaining power.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the conservative majority, declared that the Voting Rights Act does not permit states to consider race when drawing districts, even to remedy acknowledged violations of the landmark civil rights law.

“Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the state’s use of race in creating SB8,” Alito wrote. “That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”

Reading a stinging dissent from the bench — a rare act signaling profound displeasure — Justice Elena Kagan said the court’s ruling would set back the “foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.”

“Under the court’s new view of Section 2, a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote. She was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissent.

The ruling strips the teeth from what many legal scholars call the crown jewel of the civil rights era. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, enacted after the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches, allowed courts to strike down voting maps that produced discriminatory results, even without proof of racist intent.

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly sidestepped a definitive ruling that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, using a variety of procedural and doctrinal maneuvers that have effectively left the practice beyond the reach of federal courts.

In an early decision, a deeply fractured court held that partisan gerrymandering claims were justiciable but failed to produce a manageable standard for adjudicating them, leading to decades of confusion. The court then repeatedly invoked the “political question” doctrine to avoid substantive rulings, most notably when a plurality declared such claims nonjusticiable due to the absence of “judicially discernible and manageable standards,” with a fifth justice declining to join only because he left open the theoretical possibility of a future standard.

This pattern culminated in a later decision where a 5‑4 majority held that partisan gerrymandering claims are nonjusticiable political questions entirely beyond the reach of federal courts, reasoning that “federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties” and that any solution must come from legislatures or Congress — not the judiciary.

Meanwhile, the court has dodged the merits by ruling that plaintiffs lacked standing to bring their vote‑dilution claims, and in another instance, it avoided constitutional questions by upholding a denial of an injunction on equitable grounds alone.

Taken together, the Court’s reliance on the political question doctrine, its insistence on “judicially manageable standards” it refuses to craft, its evasion through standing and other threshold rulings, and its deferral to political branches have created a persistent judicially enforced immunity for partisan gerrymandering, leaving the question of its constitutionality perpetually unresolved.

The 1982 amendment to the law explicitly overturned a Supreme Court decision that had required proof of intentional discrimination.

Alito’s opinion effectively reinstates that discarded standard. He wrote that Section 2 “imposes liability only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the state intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.” He added: “Not only does this interpretation follow from the plain text of Section 2, but it is consistent with the limited authority that the Fifteenth Amendment confers.”

The practical effect is stark. Under the new rules, plaintiffs cannot use race as a consideration when drawing hypothetical “illustrative maps” to prove that a minority group is geographically compact enough to form a district.

“If a plaintiff can produce an additional majority-minority district only by using race … that illustrative map sheds no light on whether the state acted unconstitutionally by not adopting such a map,” Alito wrote. Voting rights advocates say this eliminates the primary tool for proving vote dilution claims.

The case traces an arc from the Jim Crow South to the computer‑driven gerrymandering of the 21st century. After the 2020 census, Louisiana’s Republican‑led legislature drew a map with only one majority‑Black district, even though Black residents make up a third of the state’s population.

Federal courts ruled that the Republican map likely violated the Voting Rights Act.

In 2024, the legislature reluctantly drew a second majority‑Black district, snaking from Baton Rouge to Shreveport, in part to protect the seats of Republican incumbents, including House Speaker Mike Johnson. A group of self‑described “non‑African American voters” challenged the new map.

The Supreme Court’s decision comes amid a national redistricting war unprecedented in its timing and ferocity.

President Donald Trump, fearing the loss of his party’s razor‑thin House majority, has pressed Republican‑led states to cheat by redrawing lines mid‑decade — a break from the once‑a‑decade tradition that follows each census.

This ruling is expected to unleash a new wave of litigation as states rush to eliminate majority‑minority districts.

The decision also lands at a moment of deep crisis for the court’s own credibility. Public confidence in the institution has plunged to an all‑time low, according to an NBC News poll.

This week, Fox News analyst Juan Williams — who describes himself as a “good friend” of Justice Clarence Thomas — cited mounting allegations of corruption and wrote: “A reckoning is overdue.”

In Maine, Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner publicly called for the impeachment of two justices, saying that “the relationship between Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow is not hard to see as clearly corrupt, and Justice Thomas doesn’t even recuse himself from cases that impact Crow’s businesses.”

The Callais ruling represents the third major Supreme Court assault on the Voting Rights Act in little more than a decade. In 2013, Shelby County v. Holder gutted Section 5’s preclearance requirement, freeing former Confederate states from federal oversight. In 2021, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee weakened Section 2 challenges to election laws. Now, Callais has turned Section 2’s redistricting protection into a dead letter.

The effect could be swift. Louisiana may lose its newly elected Black Democrat, Cleo Fields, who won the second majority‑Black district in 2024. Republican‑controlled legislatures across the South are expected to move quickly to redraw maps, potentially eliminating as many as a dozen majority‑minority House seats held by Democrats.

Justice Thomas filed a separate concurring opinion, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, arguing that any use of race in redistricting is categorically unconstitutional. That view, once a fringe position, now commands five votes.

The case has also illuminated a dangerous alignment of forces. Louisiana abandoned its defense of the map and joined the plaintiffs in arguing that the Voting Rights Act itself is unconstitutional.

The Trump Justice Department, for the first time in history, argued against the Voting Rights Act — urging the court to adopt a standard that would allow maps motivated purely by partisan advantage, even if they systematically shut out minority voters.

There are, however, proposals to restore balance to the Supreme Court. The Brennan Center for Justice published a set of six reforms that Congress could enact without a constitutional amendment.

They include 18‑year term limits for justices — a measure supported by 78% of Americans in the most recent Fox News poll — an enforceable ethics code to replace the current toothless online posting, and restrictions on the “shadow docket” that has allowed the court to greenlight Trump administration policies in unsigned, unexplained orders.

As Justice Kagan observed from the bench, the court’s decision will set back the cause of racial equality in electoral opportunity. But the final verdict on whether the Voting Rights Act survives will be rendered not by the justices but by the American people — and whether they demand a course correction from a branch of government that has lost their trust.

The Supreme Court is a branch of government. Nothing more, nothing less. We want it to stand up, with independence, for the rule of law. But we cannot rely on the court to do that. Its power depends on its credibility — credibility it must earn.