If the court strikes down or significantly weakens Section 2, as looks likely, it would decimate the remainder of one of the most important civil rights laws in U.S. history, and give states carte blanche to draw electoral maps that eviscerate the political power of minority voters.
Missouri voters are organizing to use their constitutional right to veto the GOP-controlled state legislature’s new gerrymandered map. But while they cleared one administrative hurdle Wednesday, the Republicans who run the state are trying to place yet another stumbling block in their path.
Among some voting rights advocates, the approaching oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, where the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a conservative challenge to the most important plank of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), feels like watching a condemned prisoner shuffling into his final pardon board hearing while the guards power up the electric chair next door.
Lawyers for the state of Texas insisted the state didn’t discriminate against Black and brown voters when it drew its new gerrymandered congressional map. But they fought tooth and nail to keep as little information as possible from coming out.
North Carolina became the latest GOP-controlled state to announce it will gerrymander its congressional map to please President Donald Trump.
A panel of three federal judges will soon decide whether to block Texas from using its new congressional map in the 2026 election, after a contentious nine-day hearing concluded Friday.
In federal court Thursday, information about Texas’ secretive redistricting process started to come into focus as Republican leadership testified.
The Republican Party’s top mapmaker testified in federal court that while he’s been instructed in the past to preserve minority congressional districts protected by the Voting Rights Act, he received no such direction when drawing Texas’ new gerrymander this summer.
A new report from pro-voting groups Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter paints a stark picture of what could happen if the court sides with plaintiffs seeking to weaken the core provision.
The pro-voting groups submitted two alternative maps for the court to consider.