Supreme Court Deals Blow to Voting Rights Act [View all]

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/29/us/supreme-court-voting-rights

Supreme Court Deals Blow to Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court announced its decision in a major challenge to the Voting Rights Act. In their opinion, which split along ideological lines, the justices struck down Louisiana’s voting map, finding that it was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the majority opinion. Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by the court’s other two liberal justices.

The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Elena Kagan writing that the majority’s opinion means that a state can “without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power.” She criticizes the majority for characterizing its opinion as an update when in fact, she writes, “those ‘updates’ eviscerate” voting rights protections.

In her dissent, Justice Kagan says the majority has gutted the Voting Rights Act. She concludes: “I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.”

...

The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave.
Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter. In
the States where that law continues to matter—the States
still marked by residential segregation and racially polar-
ized voting—minority voters can now be cracked out of the
electoral process. The decision here is about Louisiana’s
District 6. But so too it is about Louisiana’s District 2. See
supra, at 33–34. And so too it is about the many other dis-
tricts, particularly in the South, that in the last half-cen-
tury have given minority citizens, and particularly African
Americans, a meaningful political voice. After today, those
districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long.
If other States follow Louisiana’s lead, the minority citizens
residing there will no longer have an equal opportunity to
elect candidates of their choice. And minority representa-
tion in government institutions will sharply decline. At the
first stage of this judicial project to destroy the Voting
Rights Act, the Court maintained that Section 5 was no
longer needed because in recent decades “African-Ameri-
cans attained political office in record numbers.” Shelby
County, 570 U. S., at 553; see id., at 549. At this last stage,
the Court’s gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in
peril. I dissent because Congress elected otherwise. I dis-
sent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully
implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent be-
cause the Court’s decision will set back the foundational
right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral oppor-
tunity. I dissent.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/28083170/supreme-court-voting-rights-opinion.pdf