By José Niño
The Supreme Court invalidated a majority black congressional district in Louisiana in early May, rendering Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) largely unenforceable. This brings to fruition a conservative legal effort that predates the law itself.
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By a 6 to 3 margin, the conservative justices determined that the Louisiana district held by Rep. Cleo Fields depended too heavily on racial considerations. Chief Justice John Roberts characterized the 6th Congressional District as a “snake” winding more than 200 miles through Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge.
“That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander,” Justice Samuel Alito declared on behalf of the conservative bloc. Justice Clarence Thomas authored a concurring opinion urging his colleagues to push the doctrine even further:
This court should never have interpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effectively give racial groups an entitlement to roughly proportional representation. Today’s decision should largely put an end to this “disastrous misadventure” in voting-rights jurisprudence.
Writing for the three liberal justices in dissent, Justice Elena Kagan warned that the court’s “gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in peril.”
According to Jonathan Cervas, a Carnegie Mellon University political scientist who has provided expert testimony in numerous Voting Rights Act disputes:
The Voting Rights Act as a means to protect minority voters from vote dilution is essentially dead.
The Supreme Court decision marks the endpoint of a conservative legal crusade with roots extending to before the law’s passage.
Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) cast his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, contending that federal civil rights enforcement demanded “the creation of a police state” and violated the constitutional prerogatives of states. His framework supplied the intellectual foundation for conservative resistance to the Voting Rights Act in the years that followed.
Sen. Strom Thurmond, the famed pro-white Democrat from South Carolina—whose 24-hour-filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 remains the longest in Senate history—proclaimed:
All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement.
Ronald Reagan stood against the original Voting Rights Act in 1965. During his presidency, his administration battled the 1982 reauthorization. A young Justice Department attorney named John Roberts cautioned that expanding the statute “would establish a quota system for electoral politics.”
Paleoconservative pundit and presidential candidate Pat Buchanan demanded outright repeal of the VRA during his 1992 presidential campaign, characterizing redistricting under the law as “American apartheid” and proclaiming, “It’s time the South was let out of the penalty box.”
Justice Antonin Scalia labeled Section 5 a “perpetuation of a racial entitlement” during oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, prompting gasps from spectators.
Thomas contended as far back as 1994 that:
The assumptions upon which our vote dilution decisions have been based should be repugnant to any nation that strives for the ideal of a color-blind Constitution.
Heritage Action (HA) welcomed the outcome. President Kevin Roberts declared:
The Civil War amendments were forged at tremendous human cost to secure a constitutional order grounded in equality before the law—not racial classifications. Today’s decision restores that understanding and reaffirms that the Constitution does not permit sorting Americans by race in the exercise of political power.
The White House characterized the decision as a triumph for American voters. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson wrote:
The color of one’s skin should not dictate which congressional district you belong in. We commend the court for putting an end to the unconstitutional abuse of the Voting Rights Act and protecting civil rights.
Asked whether states ought to redraw their congressional boundaries following the ruling, President Donald Trump answered, “I would.”
The court’s decision articulates the constitutionally sound approach to redistricting disputes. Alito held that Section 2 essentially covers only instances of deliberate discrimination. Challengers must now establish that a state purposefully sought to weaken minority voting strength rather than merely showing that a map yields discriminatory results.
This framework reflects sound constitutional reasoning. States and municipalities cannot simply assert that racism persists and construct districts according to racial formulas. They must demonstrate actual intentional discrimination.
Conservatives have long maintained that the VRA’s sweeping incursions into state authority lacked justification under contemporary circumstances. As the Cato Institute expressed it, “It is long past time to declare victory over Jim Crow and move on to a healthier stage of race relations.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky informed Congress that the VRA was:
… one of the most important—and most successful—statutes ever passed by Congress to guarantee the right to vote free of discrimination.
That very success explains why extraordinary federal oversight of state elections has become obsolete.
Roberts observed in Shelby County that “our country has changed” since 1965 and that the coverage formula rested on “decades-old data and eradicated practices.”
Identical reasoning applies to Section 2. Mandating that states configure districts around race perpetuates the very racial consciousness that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments sought to abolish. As then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott declared following the Shelby County decision:
The U.S. Constitution establishes one United States—not a divided nation with different laws applying to different states.
The court has now confirmed that the Constitution forbids categorizing Americans by race in the allocation of political power. That principle was at issue, and the court correctly vindicated it.
José Niño is a writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is currently the Deputy Editor of Headline USA. You can contact him via Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to his Substack newsletter by visiting “Jose Nino Unfiltered” on Substack.com.
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