The Supreme Court Just Neutered the Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act has been near death since 2013, and today the Supreme Court administered the coup de grâce. In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court’s conservative majority effectively ruled that states are now free to redraw congressional districts so as to eliminate many Black Democratic members of Congress.

Specifically, the decision allows states to eliminate majority-minority districts unless it can be proven that they did so on the basis of intentional racial discrimination rather than partisan gerrymandering. Since Black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic, that will be impossible under the guidelines the court laid out. This outcome represents the opposite of what the Voting Rights Act was intended to do. Enacted in 1965 as one of the two crowning achievements of the civil rights movement, the law was meant to prohibit states from gerrymandering districts to stop Black candidates from getting elected.