The Supreme Court’s Overturning of the Voting Rights Act is Complete

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 29, 2026 – Today the MAGA-led Supreme Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais by a 6-3 majority that states are allowed to racially gerrymander so long as they are savvy enough to not explicitly voice their discriminatory intent. By gutting the last remaining section of the VRA (Section 2), the Court’s decision hammered the final nail into the coffin of a law that protected access to the polls for over half a century. Today’s decision makes it impossible to ensure that Black voters and other historically marginalized groups have the fundamental right to have their voices heard in elections.

With this decision, Chief Justice Roberts realized his decades long dream of undoing VRA protections, which began when he was a young attorney with the Reagan administration. Such attacks on our voting rights follow other recent conservative efforts to undermine free and fair elections, such as the House passage of the SAVE Act, which was essentially a poll tax that would have made voting harder. This Court, which consistently has served billionaires at the expense of everyday Americans, may further undermine voting rights later this year with a decision in Watson v. RNC.

Justice Alito’s decision for the majority basically boils down to the premise that race cannot be used to determine whether a congressional map violates Section 2’s requirement of racial proportionality. He is not subtle in explaining that a map created “only by using race” would be “unconstitutional,” and thus offers no assistance in raising a Section 2 claim. It would have to meet the state’s same objectives, like partisan gerrymandering. In other words, a state can get away with racial gerrymandering by partisan gerrymandering, but a racial minority cannot challenge that racial gerrymandering without still catering to the partisan gerrymandering. Put another way: A legislature can discriminate based on race as much as it wants so long as it hides its intent.

Justice Kagan states this plainly in her dissent for the liberals, explaining that under this ruling, “a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power.” These so-called “updates” to Section 2 “eviscerate the law” so that it will not apply in even the most obvious examples of vote dilution. She details the steady dismantling of the VRA dating back to Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, accusing the Court’s latest “update” as the Court seeking to “destroy” the law in its entirety. “I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

Alliance for Justice President Rachel Rossi issued the following statement:

“With this decision, Chief Justice Roberts has completed his campaign to eliminate the bedrock principle that all people have equal access to the polls and to representation in our democratic republic. In effectively overturning the Voting Rights Act, the Roberts Court has ensured that no law can protect against efforts to deny Black voters and other marginalized groups a voice at the ballot box. As it did in its decision against affirmative action, the Court has perverted logic itself to suggest that simple efforts to protect against racial discrimination are somehow, themselves, ‘racist.’ Like the racist literacy tests and poll taxes of the Jim Crow era, states are once again free to discriminate under the guise of neutrality.

“We are left to wonder if the Fifteenth Amendment is even enforceable or if any effort to ensure racial equality in our elections would be similarly shot down by this Court. We must face the reality that this Court cannot be trusted to uphold the Constitution and steel ourselves to enact reforms that will course-correct the third branch for the sake of our democracy.”