The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to voting rights by striking down struck down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana.
The 6-3 decision was split along ideological lines, and conservative Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion finding that Louisiana’s voting map amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, while liberal Justice Elena Kagan dissented.
“I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote,” Kagan wrote. “I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.”
The decision faced furious criticism on social media.
“The Supreme Court’s goal: Make Jim Crow Great Again,” seethed veteran journalist Mark Jacob.
“White supremacy at work,” posted comics writer and filmmaker Greg Pak. “Virginia needs to redistrict again and get rid of that one R district.”
“If you wonder why SCOTUS seems so hell-bent on helping Republicans gerrymander as many districts as possible before the midterms, this is why,” noted Bluesky user Dom Ervolina, linking to a report on spiking gasoline prices. “Cheating is the only hope they have to hold onto power.”
“We’re likely to see the first causality of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision today in Florida,” predicted University of Florida political scientist Michael McDonald. “It’s almost as if someone leaked the ruling to Florida Republicans.”
“The Roberts Court has been pursuing the slower, more deliberate version of democratic backsliding,” opined Nicholas Grossman, an international relations professor at the University of Illinois. “You can see the Supreme Court majority’s annoyance with Trump’s rapid, reckless version of democratic backsliding. The Roberts version prefers fig leafs and bad faith excuses, not smashing entirely.”
“I’m doing a lot of VRA stream of consciousness posting, but Alito’s opinion effectively states that if a racial group votes against a party due to that party’s racism, that renders racism a partisan, rather than racial act,” argued attorney Jesse Taylor.
“The implicit argument is that Republicans are allowed to suppress black voting rights BECAUSE black voters don’t like that Republicans discriminate against them,” agreed Bluesky user Grudgie the Whale. “It’s complete insanity. Republicans wouldn’t be allowed to do this if black voters were happier about it. Completely deranged.”
“Alito grounds his ruling in the 15th Amendment, a grotesque perversion of a Reconstruction Amendment to justify an opinion that will disenfranchise Black voters and likely wipe out Black representation in the south,” argued Talking Points Memo’s Kate Riga.
“John Roberts has been trying to kill Voting Rights Act since he was young lawyer in Reagan DOJ in early 1980s,” reminded Mother Jones’ Ari Berman. “That’s most important context for today’s Callais decision. Roberts Court has now issued 3 major decisions gutting VRA, turning law into dead letter.”
“The Voting Rights Act is essentially dead and it’s quite possible that we will, like when a similar SCOTUS gutted civil rights at the fall of Reconstruction, see a disappearance of much of the Black congressional representation, especially in the most heavily Black states, which are in the South,” grieved journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones.
“We must understand the racist political rhetoric, the erasure and attacks on Black history, the reinstalling of Confederate names and monuments, all go hand-in-hand as the Court and Congress legitimize the taking of political rights and the end of multiracial democracy itself,” Hannah-Jones added.
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