The historic Voting Rights Act of 1965, long considered the cornerstone achievement of America’s civil rights era, has been stripped of its final enforcement power by the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts’ leadership, according to legal scholars.
In a Wednesday decision split along ideological lines 6-3, the Court’s conservative justices eliminated what academics describe as the final functioning component of the groundbreaking legislation that emerged from the violent “Bloody Sunday” confrontation in Selma, Alabama, designed to combat racial bias in electoral processes.
UCLA election law scholar Rick Hasen characterized the Roberts Court’s treatment of the Voting Rights Act as resembling “a wrecking ball.” He explained, “There are still parts of the VRA that are operative, but the two main pillars are now virtually dead letters.”
Wednesday’s decision targeted Section 2 of the law, overturning a Louisiana electoral district map that would have created a second congressional seat with a Black majority population. This ruling will significantly complicate efforts by minority communities to contest electoral boundaries they view as racially biased under the civil rights statute.
The timing coincides with approaching November congressional races, where former President Donald Trump’s Republican allies are working to retain their grip on both chambers of Congress. Trump praised the Court’s action and predicted Republican-controlled states would move to redesign their voting districts.
Former Justice Department attorney John Yoo, who worked during the George W. Bush administration, defended the decision as advancing the Court’s effort to guarantee governmental adherence to “a color-blind Constitution.”
Justice Elena Kagan authored a forceful opposition opinion, supported by her two liberal colleagues, describing the ruling as the “latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”
Kagan referenced a 2021 decision where the conservative majority upheld Republican-supported Arizona voting measures that a lower court determined would disproportionately impact Black, Latino and Native American voters.
She also pointed to Roberts’ 2013 opinion in the Shelby County v. Holder case from Alabama, which eliminated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – a requirement that states and localities with histories of racial discrimination obtain federal permission before altering voting procedures.
Kagan emphasized that Wednesday’s verdict “is part of a set,” adding that “For over a decade, this court has had its sights set on the Voting Rights Act.”
The Voting Rights Act originated following the crucial 1965 demonstration where hundreds of Black marchers attempted to cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge and encountered state police who attacked them with nightsticks.
Following the “Bloody Sunday” violence, President Lyndon Johnson urged Congress to enact voting rights protections. Legislators responded with the Voting Rights Act, which eliminated poll taxes, literacy requirements and other discriminatory practices that white officials had used to block Black citizens from voting.
Section 5 of the original law mandated that jurisdictions with discrimination histories receive federal clearance for voting law changes, establishing criteria to determine which areas faced this “preclearance” obligation.
The Supreme Court dismantled these safeguards in 2013 through a 5-4 conservative majority decision supporting Shelby County, Alabama officials. The justices ruled that Congress relied on obsolete information when continuing to require Alabama and eight additional states, primarily in the South, to seek federal permission for changes affecting minority voters.
While the decision allowed Congress to create new criteria for determining preclearance requirements, no such replacement emerged. Section 2 remained intact temporarily.
Congress modified Section 2 in 1982 to ban electoral maps that diminish minority voting influence, regardless of whether discriminatory intent could be proven directly.
For over forty years, plaintiffs could succeed in Section 2 cases by demonstrating that voting maps produced racially discriminatory outcomes under the “results test” standard.
However, Wednesday’s ruling essentially converted Section 2 into an “intent test,” according to legal experts.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Roberts and the four remaining conservative justices. The decision stated that Section 2 analysis must focus on the Constitution’s ban against deliberate racial discrimination found in the 15th Amendment.
Adopted in 1870 after the Civil War that abolished slavery, the 15th Amendment empowers Congress to create laws ensuring voting rights cannot be denied “on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.”
Alito wrote that interpreting Section 2 to “outlaw a map solely because it fails to provide a sufficient number of majority-minority districts would create a right that the amendment does not protect.”
Harvard Law Professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos declared that Wednesday’s decision renders the results test “effectively dead.”
“It’s there in theory but now impossible to satisfy in fact,” explained Stephanopoulos, who submitted a legal brief supporting the Voting Rights Act in this case.
Press Robinson, a Louisiana resident and activist whose legal challenge initially created the second Black-majority district in his state, warned that the Supreme Court’s decision would impact government at every level nationwide. He expressed concern that elected Black officials would soon “disappear.”
“We’ll be back where we were at the time that slavery was declared illegal in this country,” Robinson told reporters during a conference call. “This country doesn’t seem to want to advance beyond that time.”
