{"id":460634,"date":"2026-04-30T01:43:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/460634\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T01:43:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T01:43:12","slug":"us-supreme-court-demolishes-voting-rights-act-gutting-racial-discrimination-provision-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/460634\/","title":{"rendered":"US supreme court demolishes Voting Rights Act, gutting racial discrimination provision \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US<\/a> supreme court has ruled that Louisiana<\/a> will have to redraw its congressional map, in a landmark decision that effectively guts a major section of the Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n

In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the court rendered ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.<\/p>\n

\u201cAllowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,\u201d justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, wrote for the majority opinion.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompliance with section 2 thus could not justify the state\u2019s use of race-based redistricting here. The state\u2019s attempt to satisfy the middle district\u2019s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s decision is a major upheaval in US civil rights law and gives politicians permission to draw districting plans that weaken the influence of Black and other minority voters. Some states may even rush ahead to try to redraw districts in advance of this year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Asked by reporters on Wednesday whether states should redraw their congressional maps in response to the ruling, US president Donald Trump<\/a> said: \u201cI would.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a dissenting opinion, justice Elena Kagan wrote the court had now accomplished a \u201cdemolition of the Voting Rights Act\u201d. <\/p>\n

The court\u2019s decision on Wednesday is the latest in a series that dismantled the law, she wrote, including a major decision in 2013 case, Shelby County v Holder, that nullified another major provision in the law that required places with a history of discrimination to get changes preapproved by the federal government before they went into effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the court\u2019s new view of section 2, a state can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens\u2019 voting power,\u201d Kagan wrote in a dissent that was joined by justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority claims only to be \u2018updat[ing]\u2019 our section 2 law, as though through a few technical tweaks. In fact, those \u2018updates\u2019 eviscerate the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s decision renders section 2 all but a dead letter,\u201d she continued. \u201cThe decision here is about Louisiana\u2019s district 6. But so too it is about Louisiana\u2019s district 2. And so too it is about the many other districts, particularly in the south, that in the last half-century have given minority citizens, and particularly African Americans, a meaningful political voice. After today, those districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the heart of the case, Louisiana v Callais, was a question of how much lawmakers are allowed to consider race when they redraw districts to ensure that Black voters are adequately represented.<\/p>\n

The supreme court initially heard oral arguments in the case last March, but took the unusual step of asking lawyers to reargue the case last fall. In setting the case for a re-argument, the justices raised the stakes of the case, asking lawyers to focus on whether section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was constitutional.<\/p>\n

In its decision on Wednesday, the court\u2019s majority stopped short of saying outright that section 2 was unconstitutional. <\/p>\n

Instead, the majority significantly reworked a three-part test that plaintiffs need to pass in order to win a section 2 redistricting test. The new test is significantly harder to pass and designed to require plaintiffs to prove intentional racial discrimination \u2013 an extremely difficult burden.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn short, section 2 imposes liability only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the state intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race,\u201d Alito wrote.<\/p>\n

Such a declaration \u201cis not only out of line with text, it is also out of line with the history of section 2\u201d, Richard Hasen, an election law scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles wrote in a blog post. In 1982, Congress amended the Voting Rights Act to clarify that proving intentional discrimination was not necessary to win a case under section 2.<\/p>\n

For decades, the first part of the three-part test in a section 2 lawsuit has required plaintiffs to show the minority group alleging discrimination is large and compact enough to constitute a majority in a single-member district. <\/p>\n

Alito\u2019s decision adds two new requirements to this \u2013 plaintiffs may not consider race in drawing a hypothetical alternative map and must also ensure that it achieves the state\u2019s traditional districting criteria and partisan goals.<\/p>\n

That change alone is a major blow to the Voting Rights Act. In the US south, voting is highly racially polarised, so drawing a district that prevents racial discrimination is likely to also affect the partisan make-up of a map. It may be impossible for a state to achieve its partisan goals without discriminating against minority voters.<\/p>\n

It also gives lawmakers virtually unlimited leeway to justify drawing districts that discriminate based on race, Kagan wrote. \u2013 The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US supreme court has ruled that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map, in a landmark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,356,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,35101,15,16,5,7,8,6221,384],"class_list":{"0":"post-460634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-louisiana","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories","25":"tag-trump-presidency","26":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116491124996181276","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}