AT A GLANCE
- The Supreme Court weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a major tool used to challenge maps that dilute minority voting power.
- The ruling could allow Republican led states to redraw congressional districts without accounting for race.
- Members of the Congressional Black Caucus warn the decision could reduce Black representation in Congress.
- Civil rights advocates say the ruling could affect elections at the congressional, state and local levels.
Supreme Court Hollows Out Landmark Law That Protected Minority Voting Rights For Six Decades
Black members of Congress are preparing for a major shift after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key part of the Voting Rights Act that has protected minority communities in political redistricting for more than 50 years.
The decision, issued Wednesday, clears the way for Republican led states to redraw U.S. House districts without the same consideration of race, potentially creating more GOP friendly seats and reducing the number of districts where Black and Latino voters have had a stronger opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said members of the caucus and House Democrats are preparing to fight the effects of the ruling.
“The Supreme Court has opened the door to a coordinated attack on Black voters across the country,” Clarke said. “This is an outright power grab.”
A Key Voting Rights Protection Weakened
At the center of the decision is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. For decades, that section allowed voters to challenge electoral maps that appeared to dilute the political power of minority communities.
The Supreme Court’s ruling came out of a Louisiana redistricting case involving a second majority Black congressional district. The court found that the map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because race was considered in drawing the district lines.
In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the section of the law at issue was designed to protect voters from intentional discrimination. Justice Elena Kagan, in dissent, warned that requiring proof of intentional discrimination creates what she called “an almost insurmountable barrier” for many voting rights challenges.
The ruling follows years of legal battles over how far states can go when drawing districts and whether race can be considered to ensure minority voters have fair representation.
Also Read: Decision to Gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act: “A Bullet in the Heart”
Congressional Black Caucus Members Warn Of Major Losses
Clarke was joined by more than a dozen members of the 60 member Congressional Black Caucus, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, as members responded to the ruling with anger, concern and calls for action.
It remains unclear exactly how many congressional seats may be affected. Redistricting experts, however, have warned that more than a dozen seats now held by minority lawmakers could be at risk.
Rep. Troy Carter of Louisiana, one of two Black Democrats from the state at the center of the case, called the ruling “a devastating blow to our democracy, plain and simple.”
Rep. Cleo Fields, who represents Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District, could be among the members most directly affected. Fields served in Congress in the 1990s before his district was redrawn.
“I’ve been down this road before, you know, 33 years ago,” Fields said.
Southern States Expected To Move Quickly
Republican leaders in several Southern states have already been discussing how to use the ruling to create new GOP friendly congressional maps.
In Florida, Republicans moved quickly to approve a new U.S. House map that included changes to a district created to elect a Black representative.
Kristen Clarke, general counsel for the NAACP and the first Black woman to serve as assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, said she expects former slave holding states to move quickly.
“I would be surprised if we do not see former slave holding states moving at lightning speed to target districts that provide Black voters and other voters of color an equal opportunity to elect candidates,” Clarke said.
She added that it is not yet clear whether state voting laws or state constitutional protections against racial discrimination will be enough to stop new district maps that reduce minority representation.
Republican officials and some Black conservatives praised the ruling as a rejection of race based district mandates. Linda Lee Tarver of the Project 21 Black Leadership Network said civil rights laws were not intended “to institutionalize racial line drawing as a default feature of our political system.”
The Voting Rights Act Helped Build Black Representation
The Voting Rights Act was signed into law on Aug. 6, 1965, five months after the Bloody Sunday attack on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, helped build national momentum for stronger voting protections.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law at the U.S. Capitol, a rare move meant to recognize the significance of the legislation and the political risk taken by members of Congress who supported it.
Over the decades, the law became one of the most consequential civil rights measures in American history, helping prevent discrimination at the ballot box and leading to the election of thousands of Black and Hispanic officials at every level of government.
Sherrilyn Ifill, a law professor at Howard University and former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said there were about 1,500 Black elected officials nationwide in 1970. Today, that number is more than 10,000.
“And it isn’t because of the goodness of people’s hearts,” Ifill said.
Ifill said that growth came because Black communities, civil rights advocates and lawyers had the legal tools to challenge attempts to weaken the voting strength of Black and Hispanic voters.
The Black Caucus And The “Conscience Of Congress”
The Congressional Black Caucus was formed in 1971, just six years after the Voting Rights Act was passed, as court ordered redistricting helped send more minority lawmakers to Congress.
At the time, the number of Black representatives in Congress grew from nine to 13. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, helped transform the earlier Democracy Select Committee, created by Democratic Rep. Charles Diggs, into the more formal Congressional Black Caucus.
The CBC quickly raised its national profile in its first year by boycotting President Richard Nixon’s State of the Union address after he refused to meet with the group. Nixon eventually agreed to meet. The caucus later issued more than 60 recommendations focused on issues affecting Black communities, including racism and housing.
The group became known as the “conscience of the Congress.”
Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia said the caucus has played a major role in American politics and warned that the ruling could weaken that voice.
“That caucus has had such an important voice in American politics, the things that we’ve been able to achieve together, the creation of equity and access,” Warnock said. “And I’m afraid that with this ruling, we could see that caucus shrink in a hugely significant way.”
Voting Rights Advocates Say Local Representation Is Also At Stake
Voting rights advocates say the ruling could affect far more than congressional districts.
Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino, said the decision could allow more aggressive efforts to divide or pack minority communities in ways that weaken their votes, affecting congressional districts, state legislatures, county commissions, school boards and city councils.
Sophia Lin Lakin, deputy director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said loss of representation can affect communities on issues such as health care, education and public works.
“States can now point to partisan objectives to justify maps that strip voters of color of representation, and federal courts will have little basis to intervene,” Lakin said.
Cliff Albright, co founder of Black Voters Matter, said the ruling could leave entire communities without meaningful representation.
“It means that you have entire communities that can go without having representation,” Albright said. “It is literally throwing us back to the Jim Crow era unapologetically, and that’s not exaggeration.”
Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington office, said the court’s gradual weakening of the Voting Rights Act amounted to “burying it without the funeral.”
A Long Erosion Of The Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act has been amended over the years, but the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder marked one of the largest changes to the law.
That decision effectively ended the formula used to determine which states and local jurisdictions needed federal approval, known as preclearance, before changing voting laws.
After that ruling, several Republican led states passed restrictive election laws, especially after President Donald Trump falsely claimed widespread fraud cost him the 2020 election against President Joe Biden.
In 2023, the Supreme Court upheld Section 2 in a redistricting case out of Alabama, a decision that helped create a district now represented by Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures. Wednesday’s ruling now makes future racial discrimination cases in redistricting significantly harder to prove.
Figures said the decision will likely lead to immediate efforts in Southern states to redraw districts in ways that dilute Black voting power.
“It will lead to states, primarily in the South, launching immediate efforts to redraw districts in ways that will dilute the impact of Black voters and drastically reduce the number of realistic opportunities to elect Black members to Congress,” Figures said.
