The Voting Rights Act is still the law of the land — but just barely.
A sweeping 6-3 Supreme Court decision Wednesday in Louisiana v. Callais, a case centered on the drawing of a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana, dramatically weakened the racial protections at the heart of the landmark civil rights law.
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While the ruling leaves the VRA intact on paper, prominent legal scholars and the court’s three liberal justices say it has been gutted so thoroughly as to be nearly unenforceable.
“Very little remains,” said NAACP general counsel Kristen Clarke, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the Biden administration. “There’s some small protections with respect to language access, an important prohibition on voter intimidation, but very little remains. This is a dark day in our democracy.”
Justice Elena Kagan, writing in dissent, called the ruling “the latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition” of the law — and warned the decision would ultimately render it a “dead letter.”
What changed — and why it matters
At the center of the ruling is Section 2 of the VRA, the provision that broadly prohibits voting discrimination based on race.
For decades, courts interpreted Section 2 to allow — and at times require — the use of racial data in drawing congressional and legislative maps, ensuring minority communities had a meaningful shot at electing candidates of their choosing.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court’s conservative majority, upended that framework Wednesday. Under his new standard, it is no longer enough to show that a map produces discriminatory results.
Challengers must now prove discriminatory intent — a “strong inference that the State intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.”
Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School who served in the Biden White House as an adviser on democracy and voting rights, said that bar will be nearly impossible to meet.
“It’ll be not just hard, but really, really really hard,” to bring future VRA challenges “in any states that allow partisanship to infect the process,” Levitt said.
Rick Hasen, a prominent election law scholar at UCLA Law, agreed.
“It is hard to overstate how much this weakens the Voting Rights Act,” Hasen wrote in response to the ruling.
The new Alito test also requires challengers to submit new suggested maps that “cannot use race as a districting criterion,” while still proving minority voters are disadvantaged — and that the disadvantage isn’t simply the byproduct of partisan mapmaking.
That’s a significant hurdle, given that the court ruled in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering claims are not subject to federal court review.
“Simply pointing to inter-party racial polarization proves nothing,” Alito wrote, “because ‘a jurisdiction may engage in constitutional political gerrymandering, even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats and even if the State were conscious of that fact.’”
Years in the making
The ruling is the most significant blow to the VRA since the court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted a separate provision requiring states and counties with a history of voting discrimination to get federal approval before changing election laws.
A string of rulings in the years that followed continued to tighten the law’s reach — save for a 2023 decision in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s liberals to leave what remained of the VRA largely intact.
Justice Clarence Thomas, concurring Wednesday, argued the court should go even further and rule that Section 2 has no role in redistricting at all.
Only Justice Neil Gorsuch joined that view.
Kagan, writing for the dissent, warned that the stakes extend well beyond Louisiana.
“It is about the many other districts, particularly in the South, that in the last half-century have given minority citizens, and particularly African Americans, a meaningful political voice,” she wrote. “After today, those districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long.”
Conservatives declare victory
For conservatives, the ruling marked the culmination of a long legal campaign.
“For decades, the left has spent hundreds of millions of dollars seeking to divide Americans along racial lines in a cynical pursuit of partisan power masquerading as civil rights enforcement,” said Adam Kincaid, president of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, in a statement. “Race-based redistricting is an odious practice prohibited by our colorblind Constitution and now the Supreme Court has restored the Voting Rights Act to its proper context.”
Conservatives have long argued that in a politically polarized America — where race and party affiliation often overlap — a results-based legal standard effectively turned VRA litigation into a partisan tool for Democrats.
“Vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South,” Alito wrote. “In a State where both parties have substantial support and where race is often correlated with party preference, a litigant can easily exploit §2 for partisan purposes.”
Republicans move fast on redistricting
The ink was barely dry on the decision before Republicans across the South were calling for action.
Within hours of the ruling, top GOP candidates, elected officials and party chairs in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina were pushing for special legislative sessions to dismantle majority-minority congressional districts — and build more aggressively gerrymandered maps ahead of the midterms.
“There is no time to waste,” said Rick Jackson, a leading GOP candidate for Georgia governor, in a statement.
“LET’S GO!” wrote Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is also running for governor in Alabama, on social media.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, described as the Republicans’ frontrunner for governor in Tennessee, shared a suggested map of her state featuring no Democratic-held districts.
“I’ll do everything I can to make this map a reality,” she said.
President Donald Trump, speaking from the Oval Office, said he would encourage states to redraw their maps if time allows.
“I would say generally I would think that they would want to do it,” Trump said.
The logistical hurdles ahead
GOP operatives are optimistic — but realistic. Filing deadlines have already passed in several states, and primaries are rapidly approaching in others, including Louisiana, where early voting began last weekend.
“There are opportunities for states that want to adjust some maps, but lots depends on timing and where the state election machinery in each state stands,” said Jason Torchinsky, a top Republican election lawyer.
Kincaid said states with maps that were drawn with race as an explicit factor should “evaluate whether you’re on any kind of strong footing to defend those maps.”
Not everyone in the GOP is sprinting toward a special session.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, rejected calls to convene one, citing a separate court ruling that prevents the state from redrawing its maps until 2030.
“While we are not in position to have a special session at this time, I hope in light of this new decision, the court is favorable to Alabama,” Ivey said.
Democrats scramble to respond
Democrats are divided on how to play the moment.
Some are dismissing the practical likelihood of Republicans pulling off quick redraws before the midterms. Others are calling for Congress to restore the VRA. And a few are ready to hit back hard.
“I have long felt that we all have to play by the same set of rules and the Republican caucus has made it very clear that they want and are setting rules of partisan gerrymandering,” Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told reporters.
“I take 52 seats from California, and 17 seats from Illinois, because at the end of the day, they’re rigging this election to try to win. And we just can’t sit back here and do nothing. We’re going to play their game, and we’re going to beat them at it,” said Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), whose own seat may be among those targeted.
New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said she is working with the state legislature to “change New York’s redistricting process so we can fight back against Washington’s attempts to rig our democracy” — though an earlier effort was already blocked in court and changes are unlikely before 2026.
Democrats have notched some early wins: California voters passed a ballot measure backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that could deliver five more Democratic House seats, and Virginia voters last month passed a measure that could net the party four seats — though that measure faces a state supreme court challenge.
“There will be a lot of redistricting for the next couple years,” Kincaid said.
Florida Legislature passes new map
As the redistricting battle erupted nationally, Florida lawmakers were already acting.
The Florida Legislature passed redrawn congressional lines Wednesday on largely partisan lines, creating four more GOP-leaning seats and making Florida the eighth state to complete mid-decade redistricting this cycle.
The map, proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis just one day before the start of a special legislative session, is widely expected to face a historic legal challenge.
Much of the opposition centered on DeSantis’ move to effectively sidestep Florida’s anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment, known as Fair Districts, which bans new political maps that benefit a political party or incumbent and protects districts with large minority populations.
State Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, a Republican sponsoring the map, acknowledged on the floor Wednesday that the plan does not comply with the state constitution — but said it is grounded in “viable legal theory” and that Florida has an “evolving legal landscape.”
DeSantis’ general counsel, David Axelman, argued in a memo that the Fair Districts minority protections are themselves unconstitutional.
“Properly understood, the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the government from divvying up the citizenry based in whole or in part upon race,” he wrote.
DeSantis has long maintained that the expected SCOTUS ruling would validate his approach.
“Called this months ago,” he wrote on social media after the decision dropped.
Democrats in the House asked for a recess to review the ruling. Republicans blocked the request.
Among the communities critics say stand to lose the most: the large Puerto Rican population in the Orlando area, currently largely represented by Democratic Rep. Darren Soto, whose seat would be eliminated under the new plan.
The Tampa Bay area would be carved into three separate districts, eliminating the region’s only Democratic seat held by Rep. Kathy Castor. Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both of South Florida, would also see their districts redrawn to favor Republicans.
“So many communities are losing representation,” said Democratic Rep. Fentrice Driskell.
Democratic Rep. Angie Nixon offered the session’s sharpest rebuke. After Persons-Mulicka said she could not speak to how the map was drawn because she was not involved in the process, Nixon fired back: “Why are you even sponsoring this bill?”
The underlying question of whether the DeSantis map violates Florida’s constitution is all but certain to land before the Florida Supreme Court.
DeSantis has appointed six of the seven current justices.
Our conversation
Sean Freeder, a political scientist and analyst, joins me on this week’s episode of “Politics & Power” to discuss the pushback and the legal fights ahead.
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