The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais is a direct hit to the heart of the Voting Rights Act and to the fragile promise that every American’s vote should carry equal weight. The VRA ended Jim Crow. Full stop. With this decision, it’s open season — once again — on Black and brown voters at the ballot box.
In 2023, the Supreme Court instructed Alabama to finally draw fair maps to create two majority-Black constitutional districts to allow Black citizens a shot at equal representation. Today, that same Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s two majority-Black congressional districts are unconstitutional — and in doing so, gutted Section 2 of the VRA, opening the door to racial gerrymanders across the South and Southwest.
It’s open season — once again — on Black and brown voters at the ballot box.
Let’s first understand what the VRA is. After the Civil War, the 13th Amendment banned slavery (mostly). The 14th Amendment granted birthright citizenship (for now). And the 15th Amendment barred the federal government and the states from denying the right to vote based on race, color and servitude (in theory). But until the fairly recent year of 1965, the 15th Amendment was routinely ignored by Southern states using the legal mechanism of Jim Crow.
Poll taxes, literacy tests and language restrictions were the most visible tools of voter suppression. However, Black voters who successfully navigated those hurdles still faced the ignominy of not having a real choice. Hostile political regimes drew the boundaries of voting lines and districts to make it impossible for Black and brown voters to elect anyone who represented their interests. Enter the Voting Rights Act.
Section 2 of that act made it illegal to design districts to dilute or block racial communities from finding common cause. It also required a corrective action: When populations routinely boxed out of meaningful participation hit a certain threshold, political districts should reflect their growing power. Thus, political leaders couldn’t use maps as weapons to permanently silence the voices of people of color.
The John Roberts Court has now declared that racism in American politics is no more. Despite the recent behavior in Texas and North Carolina, Wednesday’s cruel Callais decision pretends that Jim Crow is a bygone era and not this week’s news. Section 2 represented the core protection against racially discriminatory redistricting, but now the court has dramatically narrowed one of the last meaningful tools marginalized communities had to challenge maps designed to erase their political existence. For decades, Section 2 gave Black voters in the South and brown voters in the Southwest access to the courts to remedy harm. There was something those voters could do when, for example, state legislatures split Black neighborhoods across districts or packed Latinos into as few seats as possible to minimize their broader influence. Section 2 was not a perfect safeguard but it worked, and it instituted accountability.
Now, thanks to Roberts, who has made a career of dismantling the Voting Rights Act, and the rest of the Supreme Court’s conservative members, that accountability is gone.
We are rushing headlong into midterm elections, and that timing matters. The Supreme Court and those celebrating this decision know what they’ve done. Lines drawn on state maps determine who has a realistic chance to win seats in Congress and in state legislatures. Lines drawn on county and municipal maps determine who wins seats on school boards. Such lines can be drawn to guarantee voters of color are silenced before a single vote is cast. The consequences of this disastrous ruling are already reverberating across our country. Majority-Black districts could be dismantled or diluted. Latino districts in fast-growing areas could lose political muscle. Representatives championing the minority communities they represent will likely lose their seats. Congressional maps in closely divided states could be tilted further away from competitiveness.
Almost immediately, Florida redrew its federal legislative districts as lawmakers meet in special session. In Mississippi, the state where I grew up, the governor has called for a special session to make the state Supreme Court less racially representative. In Georgia, where I live, conservative candidates are calling for the Georgia Legislature to follow suit. Today’s decision will open a floodgate of redrawn political districts and retaliatory actions, a mere four years before the next U.S. Census will remind us of what we know to be true: The demographics of America are evolving. This ruling is an attempt to slow the pace of change, if not halt it altogether.
Once such horrible maps are in place, reversing them is extraordinarily difficult.
While Black voters are disproportionately at risk after Thursday’s ruling — they could lose up to 30% of the Congressional Black Caucus, Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter say — it’s important to emphasize that every American who doesn’t share the ideology driving the erasure of Black voting strength is at risk.
When courts curtail the ability to challenge unfair maps, the ripple effects extend to Latino communities, Asian American neighborhoods, Native American enclaves, young voters, working-class districts and rural regions alike. The restoration of racial discrimination in voting makes it easier to take power from all of us. As devastating as Thursday’s ruling is, we saw it coming. Over 15 years, the VRA has been weakened several times. Shelby County v. Holder hollowed out Section 5. Rucho v. Common Cause allowed for partisan gerrymandering and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee limited lawsuits against racially discriminatory voting laws.
The Voting Rights Act stood as a guard against abuse of power by a racial majority that had — and has — repeatedly failed to act fairly.
Today’s ruling on Louisiana v. Callais strikes even closer to the bone by narrowing the very mechanism communities use to fight discriminatory maps in court. These decisions have steadily built upon one another, eviscerating the protections mandated by the 15th Amendment and perhaps altering the country’s memory of what the VRA attempted to fix. More than just a law protecting voting rights, the VRA stood as a guard against abuse of power by a racial majority that had — and has — repeatedly failed to act fairly.
This is how authoritarianism is imposed: through incremental decisions that remove democracy’s guardrails. We now find ourselves returning to the before-times. But instead of Alabama state police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, we have state legislators with poison pens, drafting themselves into permanent power. In a democracy, the faith of the people is born of a belief that they can participate in its processes and benefit from its success. Authoritarians need only break that faith in order to hold on to power or expand it. And the Supreme Court has been hard at work to make it so.
But the Supreme Court is not the only actor in this story. Congress retains the authority to strengthen voting rights protections. State legislatures can adopt independent redistricting commissions or refuse to vote for racially discriminatory maps. Voters can reach out to elected officials at every level of government and demand that they publicly take a stand for voting rights. Civic organizations can mobilize communities to solve for voter suppression tactics even when the rules shift.
In Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court lies to America by claiming a racial neutrality in our laws that every day under this regime proves false. Politicians opposed to full participation in democracy will rush to take advantage of this hat-tip to hatred, and the resulting political fights will destabilize our country months ahead of November’s midterm elections.
But the midterms are a way station on the road to saving America’s soul, and we must understand them — and this decision — as a call to action. We who believe in democracy must act with urgency and elect leaders of moral integrity.
The fight for a multiracial democracy is the central pillar of our national story. For 250 years, we have grappled with our choices and sometimes suffered the consequences. But we have always moved forward when people organized, persisted and refused to back down. That work must — and will — continue.
Stacey Abrams
Stacey Abrams, a New York Times bestselling author, is a former member of the Georgia House of Representatives, where she served as minority leader for seven years. She was the first Black woman to become the gubernatorial nominee for a major party in United States history.