Supreme Court Conservatives Deal Major Blow to Voting Rights

The Supreme Court struck another major blow to voting rights on Wednesday, ruling that a Louisiana congressional map drawn to protect minority voters was an unconstitutional form of racial gerrymandering. The map had been drawn in accordance with a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The 6-3 ruling fell along ideological lines, with the court’s six conservatives ruling against the state’s congressional map. The decision narrows the acceptable interpretations of Section 2, the provision in the landmark civil rights legislation that prevents states from using the districting process to discriminate against voters on the basis of race. 

In the court’s majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito 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,” and that a “proper” understanding of the statute  “does not intrude on States’ prerogative to draw districts based on nonracial factors, including to achieve partisan advantage.” 

Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissenting opinion, writing that the majority’s decision “renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”

“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan added, “Without a basis in Section 2’s text or the Constitution, the majority formulates new proof requirements for plaintiffs alleging vote dilution. Those demands, meant to ‘disentangle race from politics,’ ante, at 25, leverage two features of modern political life: that racial identity and party preference are often linked and that politicians have free rein to adopt partisan gerrymanders.” 

The immediate impact of the decision is unclear beyond Louisiana, which will have to redraw its congressional map, but it could lead Republicans to attempt to redraw districts with predominant minority populations.
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“Today’s decision is a devastating blow to what remains of the Voting Rights Act, and a license for corrupt politicians who want to rig the system by silencing entire communities,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson wrote in a statement. “The Supreme Court betrayed Black voters, they betrayed America, and they betrayed our democracy. This ruling is a major setback for our nation and threatens to erode the hard-won victories we’ve fought, bled, and died for.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.