What's next after a devastating voting rights ruling by SCOTUS?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

For more than a decade, legal experts and court watchers have been predicting the demise of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts, but foresight does not make the reality of what happened in the final days of April any easier to absorb. A 6-3 majority handed down an utterly disastrous and disingenuous ruling on April 29 in Louisiana v. Callais. In the hours following this ruling, Campaign Legal Center Senior Vice President — and noted voting rights attorney — Bruce V. Spiva, released a powerful statement condemning the majority’s decision.

The case that produced the Callais ruling centered on Louisiana’s congressional map, where, in 2024, Black Louisianans, who make up a third of the state’s population, were able to elect two representatives of their choice for the first time in history. Louisiana has six members of Congress. The map that enabled this was put in place after a successful legal challenge under Section 2 of the VRA.

The majority’s ruling overturning this fair map (which CLC argued against in two amicus briefs) has broad implications that could produce the largest drop in Black representation in Congress our nation has ever witnessed.

Before Callais, the bar for successfully challenging racial vote dilution — the legal term for implementing racially discriminatory voting maps — was substantial but achievable to remedy egregious violations. Now, while Section 2 still technically exists on paper, it is a “dead letter,” as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent.

https://www.brightamerica.org/p/whats-next-after-a-devastating-voting