The Supreme Court Left No Doubt: It Will Gut the Voting Rights Act - Elie Mystal [View all]

[In It to Win It]

The Nation (Archived)

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in Louisiana v. Callais, a case about whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prevents white people from overrepresenting themselves in Congress. Oral arguments can sometimes sound like the justices are deliberating great and technical points of law, but the outcome in this case was decided long before the lawyers arrived at the courthouse. The six Republican justices are going to declare the Voting Rights Act inert and allow the dilution of Black voting rights through racist gerrymandering. Oral arguments were largely an exercise of the Republicans justifying their racist positions.

At issue were maps for congressional districts in Louisiana. The state has six congressional districts. After the 2020 Census, the state produced a map where five of those districts were majority white. But Louisiana is only 56 percent white, and 31 percent Black. Simple math should tell you that there should be at least two districts in Louisiana that are majority-minority.

That said, if math is not your thing (and it never is for Republicans when the math doesn’t result in their supremacy over others), then the Voting Rights Act and the 15th Amendment should be. Section 2 of the VRA allows the federal courts to intervene when a state discriminates against the voting rights of Black people. Louisiana was sued by the NAACP after the 2020 census, and a court ordered the state to redraw its maps, producing two majority-minority districts.

A group of white plaintiffs in Louisiana then countersued the state over its new, less racist maps, arguing (wait for it) that this application of the VRA violated their constitutional rights. The white litigants were arguing that their overrepresentation in Congress is permissible and that attempts to use the VRA to stop them is the real constitutional violation.

Here's my full breakdown of yesterday's voting rights case, where the Supreme Court will likely say that overrepresntation of whites in Congress is constitutionally mandated.

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— ElieNYC (@elienyc.bsky.social) 2025-10-16T15:44:13.825Z