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The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday in the case known as Louisiana v. Callais was a legal document with immense political repercussions.
The central question, writes scholar Sam D. Hayes, was “to what extent race can, or must, be used when congressional districts are redrawn.” The law at issue was 1965’s landmark Voting Rights Act, specifically Section 2, which protects against racial discrimination in voting practices or procedures, including redistricting.
In striking down a Black-majority voting district in Louisiana, the court’s conservative majority claimed to have kept the Voting Rights Act intact. But to liberal Justice Elena Kagan, the decision represented the “now-completed demolition” of the act.
Hayes writes that the ruling “carries major implications for the 2026 midterm elections” and could “make it easier for states to draw partisan gerrymanders of their congressional districts that reduce the power of minorities.”
In a separate article, historian Robert D. Bland argues that the court’s decision is just “the latest in a long line of successful attempts, by both state and federal authorities, to limit the political power of Black Americans and … reverse the gains they won in two periods of civil rights advancement.”
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President Lyndon Johnson hands a pen to civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the signing of the Voting Rights Act in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 6, 1965.
Hulton Archive, Washington Bureau/Getty Images
Sam D. Hayes, Simmons University
The conservative majority at the US Supreme Court has issued a ruling in a gerrymandering case that one liberal justice called the ‘now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.’
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Science + Technology
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Deana L. Weibel, Grand Valley State University
Astronauts report feeling profoundly awestruck when they go to space, an anthropologist reports. This experience shapes their perspectives even back on Earth.
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