Marjorie Cohn on the Roberts Court’s demolition of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the law that brought an end to the Jim Crow system of post-Civil War legalized racial segregation.
President Lyndon B. Johnson shaking hands with Martin Luther King Jr. at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965. (Yoichi Okamoto, LBJ Library, Wikimedia Commons)
By Marjorie Cohn
Special to Consortium News
In perhaps its most insidious decision in nearly a century, the U.S. Supreme Court disemboweled Section 2 of the landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, the “crown jewel” of the U.S. civil rights movement.
The VRA ended Jim Crow-era election procedures that precluded Black people from voting in the South through intimidation, literacy tests and poll taxes. It was part of a system of post-Civil War legalized racial segregation meant to restore white supremacy after the end of slavery and the federal, military occupation of the South.
Jim Crow lasted from 1877 until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the following year.
Section 2 of the VRA allows states to draw voting districts that benefit candidates from racial minorities and enables citizens to challenge election maps as racially discriminatory.
In its Wednesday ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the 6-3 rightwing supermajority of the Court struck down a congressional map that a group of self-described “non-African American” voters had challenged as an unconstitutional gerrymander.
Court members Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett held that drawing districts to remedy past discrimination itself constitutes unconstitutional racial discrimination.
For 61 years, the VRA has been one of the most significant protections against racial gerrymandering. Thanks to the VRA, there are now more than 10,000 Black elected officials throughout the country, compared to about 1,500 in 1970.
Callais paves the way for the largest decrease in representation by Black members of Congress. It will lead to the elimination of dozens of Black and Latino-majority districts throughout the South and a substantial number of current congressional seats.
“This court’s project to destroy the Voting Rights Act is now complete,” Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, joined by Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”
Section 2 prohibits any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or practice or procedure, that “results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.”
That occurs when voters of color “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”
Congress amended Section 2 in 1982 to provide that evidence of discriminatory intent is not necessary to prove racial discrimination; even policies that appear neutral can have a discriminatory effect on a particular group.
In the 1986 case of Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court interpreted the amended Section 2 and established a multi-factor test to decide when a jurisdiction must draw districts to provide minority voters a fair opportunity to elect representatives of their choosing.
The Gingles test has been used by courts for 40 years. Three years ago, the high court affirmed the test in Allen v. Milligan and held that Alabama’s congressional map likely violated Section 2.
The Callais Majority Rewrites a Congressional Statute
The Roberts Court since June 2022: Front row, from left: Sonia Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan. Back row, from left: Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)
In Louisiana v. Callais, a coalition of Black voters and civil rights groups sought to reinstate a map that the Louisiana state legislature had adopted in 2024. The map established a second majority-Black congressional district. It was drawn in response to a U.S. district court ruling that a map drawn in 2022 likely violated Section 2.
That 2022 map included only one majority-Black district out of Louisiana’s six congressional districts. The coalition maintained that the 2022 map diluted the votes of Black residents, who comprise about one-third of Louisiana’s population.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court decision that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2, and the appellate court ordered Louisiana to draw a new map by Jan. 15, 2024. The Louisiana Legislature complied and drew a map with a second majority-Black district.
In response, the “non-African American” voters challenged the 2024 map as unconstitutional because it separated voters based primarily on race.
Samuel Alito, writing for the Court’s supermajority, said that the 2024 map “relied too heavily on race.” He wrote that the coalition of Black voters had not proved “an objective likelihood that the [2022] map was the result of intentional racial discrimination,” even though it only contained one majority-Black district out of the state’s six Black districts.
Despite the 1982 congressional amendment to Section 2, stating that racial discrimination can be proved by showing discriminatory effect, the Court restored the requirement that voters challenging district maps must prove that “circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.”
While asserting that it was simply “updating” the Gingles test, the Court actually rewrote it to erect an insurmountable barrier to plaintiffs’ claims of racial discrimination.
“In sum,” Alito concluded,
“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 [the 2024 map]. That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”
After the Supreme Court’s decision, states can now defend their maps by claiming they were just engaging in partisan (as opposed to racial) gerrymandering. The high court decided in the 2019 case of Rucho v. Common Cause that although partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, it cannot be challenged in federal court.
“Today . . . the majority straight-facedly holds that the Voting Rights Act must be brought low to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders,” Kagan wrote in her dissent.
Now “the State need do nothing more than announce a partisan gerrymander. Assuming the State has left behind no smoking-gun evidence of a race-based motive (an almost fanciful prospect), Section 2 will play no role.”
Kagan further declared:
“The Voting Rights Act is — or, now more accurately, was — one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history. It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality.
And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed — not the Members of this Court. I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”
Roberts Fulfills Longtime Goal of Neutering Voting Rights
Roberts taking the oath of office as chief justice by Justice John Paul Stevens in the White House as President George W. Bush and Roberts’ wife Jane look on, Sept. 29, 2005. (White House Photo Office /Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
“John Roberts has proven far more dangerous than ideologues like Thomas and Alito. He is a politician who plays a long game, slicing the salami piece by piece until there’s nothing left,” David Gespass, Alabama civil rights attorney and past president of the National Lawyers Guild, posted on Facebook.
Roberts has a history of eschewing the consideration of race in voting and discrimination cases. As a young lawyer in the Ronald Reagan administration, Roberts promoted a “colorblind” approach to voting rights and discrimination in public schools.
In 1982, when Congress was considering amending Section 2 to prohibit voting practices that had a racially discriminatory effect, Roberts was the point person in the Justice Department in the campaign to defeat the amendment.
In a 2006 voting rights case, Roberts cynically wrote, “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” The following year, he flippantly wrote in a case striking down voluntary desegregation programs in Louisville and Seattle, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Roberts authored the 2013 opinion in Shelby County v. Holder that gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which had required federal preclearance before changes to election rules could go into effect in jurisdictions with a history of discriminatory voting practices.
“What the Supreme Court did today is stab the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in its very heart,” civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis said at the time.
But in Shelby, Roberts provided assurances that Section 2 would still be available to challenge racial discrimination in voting.
Now, the Roberts Court has neutered Section 2 as well.
Roberts’ “aim has always been clear, but he takes his time to reach it to deceive people into thinking he’s careful and deliberative, looking at each case on its own merits,” Gespass added. “He is careful and deliberative, carefully and deliberately moving toward a country that returns what little power others have won from rich white men back to them.”
‘An Outright Power Grab’
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry at an even in Baton Rouge in October 2025. (Gage Skidmore / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)
“With this decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court has opened the door to a coordinated attack on Black voters across this country,” Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said at a press conference after the ruling was announced.
Nearly 70 of the 435 congressional districts are protected by Section 2, according to election law expert Nicholas Stephanopoulos.
Democracy Docket has data showing that the Callais ruling will likely derail 28 pro-voting lawsuits that seek to prevent state legislatures from drawing maps that dilute the power of racial minority voters.
The ruling has already prompted a rash of Republican redistricting efforts throughout the South in advance of the 2026 midterm elections this November. Republicans in Louisiana, Tennessee and Georgia are considering redistricting before the midterms.
Today, I joined my colleagues as Chair of @TheBlackCaucus to speak out against the Supreme Court’s troubling decision to weaken a critical provision of the Voting Rights Act.
This ruling will have real and lasting consequences for Black and brown voters across the country.
Our… pic.twitter.com/sZF0TnegNd— Rep. Yvette D. Clarke (@RepYvetteClarke) April 29, 2026
Louisiana has suspended next month’s primaries to allow lawmakers to pass a new congressional map first. If these efforts occur and sustain legal challenges, the GOP stands to gain as many as five new seats this year.
GOP-led states could pick up as many as 19 new GOP-allied House seats in the coming years.
David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, told Axios, “I think, realistically, we’re probably talking about one to three seats for 2026, but it’s not hyperbolic to call this an apocalyptic ruling for Black majority districts in 2028 in the Deep South.”
An analysis conducted by The New York Times last year found that Democrats could lose about 12 majority-minority districts throughout the South if the Court struck down part of the VRA.
“This is an outright power grab,” Rep. Clarke said. “It’s about silencing Black voices, dismantling majority Black districts and rigging the maps so that politicians can choose their voters instead of the other way around.”
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
July 13, 2006 the U.S. House of Representatives in a bipartisan vote of 390–33. voted to extend the voter rights act for 25 years until 2031.
July 20, 2006 the U.S. Senate voted unanimously by a 98-0 vote to extend the voter rights act by 25 years to 2031.
July 27, 2006 President George W. Bush signed the 25 year extension of the voter rights act to 2031.
I would note that President George W. Bush on July 29 2005 nominated John Roberts to a SEAT on the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
After the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist in September 2005, President Bush withdrew the initial nomination and nominated Roberts to fill the Chief Justice vacancy.Confirmation: The U.S. Senate confirmed John Roberts as Chief Justice on September 22, 2005, with a 78-22 vote.
October 31, 2005 President Bush nominated Sam Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace retiring justice Sandra Day O’Connor after Bush’s initial nomination of Harriet Miers was withdrawn.
After the withdrawl of Harriet Miers President Bush nominated Sam Alito who was confirmed by the Senate 58-42 on January 30, 2006.
So on the ONE HAND President George W. Bush signed a 25 year extension of the voting rights act until 2031.
On the OTHER HAND George W. Bush put two Justices on the Supreme Court, John Roberts and Sam Alito, who would destroy the voting rights act.
My understanding was that SCOTUS did not reinstate the Voting Right legislation because it only applied to the South. Their point was that there was no evidence that the racial bigotry behind the creation of the bill still was confined to the South. If applied equally to all states it would have probably been reinstated.
This country just keeps on swirling in the toilet bowl, awaiting delivery to the sewage treatment plant and a well-deserved nonexistence. Congratulations to us all. We’re finally getting exactly what we deserve…
I agree wholeheartedly.
There is a bigger issue . . . and that is, the creation of districts of voters has created a “divide and conquer” situation to enable the uniparty (i.e. Democrats and Republicans, with little difference between them; “two wings of the same bird-of-prey) to monopolize US political office.
There is no real representation in state nor federal governments.
The solution: no districts.
The Senate is meant to represent state interests. Leave that as-is.
The House is meant to be representatives of people: So, 174 million registered voters in the US in 2024; 435 House seats; divide the two values = 400,000.
If anyone can get that many people to agree to represent them, they have a seat.
No problem about gerrymandering.
People with similar views across the country can still be represented.
It will DESTROY the present political parties . . . but that is an EXCELLENT byproduct.
It will also destroy the fallacy that CONgress represents “the people”.
Right now: if you have forty million people with the same opinion on what they consider the most important topics distributed across the country, they almost certainly will not be represented. With this system they will.
I say this at least every 10 years and, oftentimes I have occasion to say it in the in between years:
The US Constitution has no requirement that the states be divided into US congressional districts.
If we would eliminate districts that would make the gerrymandering of districts impossible.
It would also take most states out of the first-past-the-post realm. First-past-the-post is what makes our country a two-party system.
In a state like Louisiana, with six members of the US Congress, each citizen would would still have one vote for a US Representative but there would be six seats to be filled.
I think that Louisianans are right to complain that, under the current system, there aren’t enough black majority districts because having 2 of them would be more proportional to the state population. However, eliminating districts would in effect make the entire state one district with 6 reps. This is called proportional representation and this type of system is what allows other countries to develop multiple parties.
Black Louisianans would have a good chance of getting two black reps without black Louisianans having to live in certain areas or draw lines in certain ways. We would never have to redistrict again. That stressful every ten year battle would be a thing of the past.
Moreover, people could divide themselves into more than just two groups. They wouldn’t have to divide along color lines. People with Green or Socialist or Libertarian ideologies might be able to get their own candidates elected.
I presented this idea to someone once and she said, “Dave, ultra-conservative right wingers like that idea.”
Of course! Anybody who’s not ideologically aligned with Republicans or Democrats would like that idea. That would include Communists, Greens, Socialists, Libertarians, and other further right parties as well. The fact that they like it is just further evidence that it’s an idea that’s conducive to having a multi-party system.
The system we have is one with two imperialist, genocidal war parties. And the far right is doing it’s best to take over the Republican Party anyway.
Eliminating US Congressional districts would open the way to at least one or maybe more peace parties gaining some power because the majority of the country wants peace and that’s not coming from either the Democratic or Republican Party.
Agree. LBJ’s first-past-the-post elections allow Purple states (such as Virginia where I live) with roughly equal two-party populations to game the political system, with redistricting, the new Power Game.
Spanberger, VA’s new Governor (supposedly with an assist from Obama) has over-ruled the state’s constitution which tries to minimize gerrymandering. A bipartisan commission was created to do the census-linked redistricting. In 2023 it produced six majority Democrat and five Republican districts. Spanberger, the former CIA official who finally won by a decent majority (15%) as Governor after barely winning her three terms as US House member (the last mostly by massive Northern Virginia– Democrat– turnout despite not residing in her district), offered a plan that would create 10 majority Democrat districts and one Republican district. A referendum barely passed (the geographical results mirrored Spanberger’s Governor election). Now hung up in the Courts.
Most European countries seem to have proportional political systems, where any party with an arbitrary percentage of the vote gets at least one representative and those with higher percentages get higher numbers of representatives. Often no one party has a majority and are forced to form coalition governments and to compromise on policy. (I wonder, how can they even agree to go to War?)
Lani Guinier was nominated by Bill Clinton in his first term and withdrawn in part because she supported “bullet voting”
This Chicago Times article tells how in Illinois bullet voting had been used to guarantee minority representation
hxxps://www.chicagotribune.com/1994/03/30/cumulative-voting-takes-lani-guinier-into-the-mainstream/
Say you had a state with 4 Congresspersons and instead of districts they were elected State wide with one vote per candidate a majority could elect all 4 even if the minority was 40%, maybe 45%.
With “BULLET VOTING” each voter gets 4 votes for Congressional Candidates and could vote all 4 votes for ONE CANDIDATE.
A 40% minority if all cast 4 votes for 1 candidate would almost certainly win the election of the person they voted for.
Rank Choice voting does not guarantee that any minority candidate would win.
In America, polls regularly show that a vast majority of Americans feel the nation is moving in the wrong direction. In a functioning democracy, this should be impossible. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people can never go in a direction that the people feel is the wrong dang direction.
Elections do matter. These same polls have a strange feature. Every four years, the number of Americans who think we might go in the right direction barely touches 50%. This is the result of the illusion of the elections. The illusion fades, usually rather quickly. Soon, the number of people who feel that the country is going in the wrong direction goes back up to near 70%, and the approval rating of the elected leader goes back to 40%. Party does not matter. The elections do not actually change the direction of the country. The elections only create the illusion of a change of direction. But, one thing for certain, the elections do not matter in terms of changing the ‘wrong’ direction of the nation.
So, wow, now the Loser Left is worried that people may not be able to cast their fake votes in a system that is rigged to prevent all peaceful attempts at real change.
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”
— Emma Goldman … deported from the Land of the Free for the thought crime of saying such a thing out loud. That was over a century ago, so this is not a recent development. And she was not deported by a Republican administration, but by the Democrats. Since this has been going on for a century, this is definitely a bi-partisan stance against democracy and elections that might really change things.
As an observer, I have to say that the entire US democratic process (the institutions which oversee the process, first-past-the-post voting, the usurpation of democracy by monolithic business conglomerates [GOP & DNC, and PACS], the electoral college, etc) is one of the most archaic and undemocratic systems in place.
Feudal doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Little wonder that on a regular basis 30-odd per cent of those eligible to vote refuse to participate.
And yet this is the system, the process, which consecutive presidents implore ‘god to bless’, and that they’re prepared to exterminate, bomb back into the stone-age countries which refuse to accept the US model.
The main thrust of all leftish protest in the USA needs to include demands for a democratic democracy, and that will necessitate a new process/system.
God bless America?
If god’s interest in the USA reflects that of most of humanity, then America is going to have to seek another saviour.
A human’s package – skin color/texture – when humans are ignorant and into wishful thinking mode, appears a signal for the truth and/or wishful thinking. As AA knows full well, the truth exposes itself by actions taken. Only actions. Not talk. Not connections. But actions. Trump declared bankruptcies 6 times in 1990’s. 6 times. ” Following the Taj Mahal bankruptcy, contractors and suppliers were often paid only a fraction of what they were owed, sometimes receiving roughly 33 cents on the dollar for services rendered.”
Yup. Trump a true “workers” man. O yea?
Just what does voting have to do with billionaires ruling both political parties and the mass media on political political betting for full spectrum dominance attempting to control world economic profit motives behind the scenes of all the accumulated wealth inherited from all what western empires through history.
“Section 2 of the VRA allows states to draw voting districts that benefit candidates from racial minorities and enables citizens to challenge election maps as racially discriminatory.”
And that’s what citizens did: claimed that the racially drawn map was discriminatory … and it was.
Look what so-called liberals have fallen to: defending obvious and acknowledged race-based decision making by a govt that is supposed to treat all equally regardless of race, color, creed … wouldn’t the liberal position here be fighting to eliminate gerrymandering in total, rather than preserving it for some token representation?
And all this in service of what? That the right type of person represent a population? Is it a given that a black person is a better representative of black people, no matter what? Is justice Thomas a better representative if black Louisianans than justice Sotomayor? Why not?
Doesn’t this whole argument strike at the heart of representative government in general?
“RACE” is a misused term that has become infested with ideology, instead of reality. everyone born, except those of mixed “race” parents is a product of centuries of genetic heritage. We have zero choice in all that. whatever one is born as, if at all born< is what one is and a unique product of evolution. As such, one must make one’s own way thru this blick of existence. You are what you are, and must defend that in the survival of Darwin’s theory. One’s own “tribe” is what one is, and one’s own turf must be defended, eternal law. Under the premise of “democracy” race is supposed to be irreverent, but that is a question. The “question” is another question. HH
Here is the modern Liberal mind. Money and jobs depend on a Team Blue victory. The elected ones get the positions that let them collect large “donations” to pass laws. Nothing like a desk sign that says “Committee Chair” to improve one’s personal bank balance. The lieutenants in the party get new jobs. Staff jobs to the elected ones, jobs associated with the majority, lobbying jobs to lobby the new majority, etc.
This is what they are fighting for in an “election”. A bunch of people who you do not know, who are unlikely to live in your neighborhood, get power and money if Team Blue defeats Team Red. That’s what all of this is all about. It has nothing to do with ordinary people. It has nothing to do with a government that actually helps or gives a dang about ordinary people.
Team Blue sees this as a setback to their goals of getting more power and money for the handful of people who will benefit from a Team Blue victory. And that is the only dang thing they care about even a little bit.
Money and jobs do depend on a Team Blue victory, as we are reliving once again to no normal person’s surprise. I am 62 and every republican president in my lifetime has created a recession in their term. Clockwork. And then white people reluctantly vote for a democrat in large enough numbers to get them elected to clean up the mess and the chaos, only to turn back to a mediocre white guy republican who claims to be a christian and heterosexual (yeah, about that part….) to get their bigotry fix. It keeps repeating like groundhog day.
Prima Facie, it was not discriminatory. Black people make up 35% of Louisiana’s electorate. Two out of 6 representatives were black, which is 33%. Democrats have repeatedly proposed legislation to make districting commissions independent over the last 10 years but republicans have always rejected it, which tells you all you need to know about who benefits from partisan gerrymandering. All Roberts and Alito are saying is that whites are the only ones that can be allowed to racially gerrymander.
Your % argument only makes sense to a person who believes that only people of their own race can represent them. This goes against the heart and soul of representative government. Do you really think a Clarence Thomas represents black Louisianans better than a liberal white or Asian? Why?
As for the Gerrymander, it works for the dominant party in the state, whether R or D … and, of course and always, for the powers that be behind the parties.