{"id":67932,"date":"2026-05-03T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.democracydocket.com\/?post_type=news&#038;p=67932"},"modified":"2026-05-01T13:15:01","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T17:15:01","slug":"alito-says-supreme-court-is-just-updating-the-vra-not-killing-it-thats-false","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.democracydocket.com\/analysis\/alito-says-supreme-court-is-just-updating-the-vra-not-killing-it-thats-false\/","title":{"rendered":"Alito says Supreme Court is just updating the VRA, not killing it. That\u2019s false"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In his opinion in Callais v. Louisiana, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito claimed the majority was merely modernizing the Voting Rights Act (VRA), not killing the landmark civil rights law outright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWe need only update the framework so it aligns with the statutory text,\u201d Alito wrote about the VRA&#8217;s Section 2, which Congress enacted to ban racially discriminatory voting laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But legal experts, voting rights advocates, and even the VRA\u2019s loudest foes all agree with Justice Elena Kagan: \u201c[I]n fact, those \u2018updates\u2019 eviscerate the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cUnder the Court&#8217;s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systemically dilute minority citizens\u2019 voting power,\u201d Kagan wrote in her dissent. \u201cOf course, the majority does not announce today\u2019s holding that way. Its opinion is understated, even antiseptic.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Harvard University law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos went further, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ProfNickStephan\/status\/2049500272779550761\">writing<\/a> on X: \u201cSure, Section 2 wasn&#8217;t officially struck down. But it might as well have been. It&#8217;s now useless to minority voters under virtually all circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of the loudest backers of the redistricting war <a href=\"https:\/\/www.democracydocket.com\/analysis\/more-states-consider-joining-redistricting-fight-launched-by-trump\/\">launched<\/a> by President Donald Trump last year seemed to agree.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhile not overturning section 2 of the VRA, [Callais] construes it into near-irrelevance. All minority voters are entitled to is that the map drawers NOT use race as a metric in drawing their maps,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/willchamberlain\/status\/2049497834022441062\">wrote<\/a> Will Chamberlain, senior counsel at the far-right Article III Project. \u201cNo more majority-minority districts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cYou have to understand how brilliant Alito is,\u201d Chamberlain <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/willchamberlain\/status\/2049498511951933913\">added<\/a>. \u201cThis is actually *better* than getting rid of section 2 outright, because it means section 2 can be used to CHALLENGE majority-minority districts (for impermissibly using race).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"sign-up\n\t\">\n\t<div class=\"sign-up__inner\">\n\t\t<div class=\"sign-up__header\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"sign-up__eyebrow text--h6\">\n\t\t\t\t\tSIGN UP TODAY\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<h2 class=\"sign-up__title text--h1\">\n\t\t\t\t\tGet updates straight to your inbox \u2014 for free\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"sign-up__desc\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<p>Join 350,000 readers who rely on our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest in voting, elections and democracy.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"sign-up__form\">\n\t\t\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/js.hsforms.net\/forms\/embed\/v2.js\"><\/script><script>hbspt.forms.create({ region: \"na1\", portalId: \"48216804\", formId: \"fab07014-69b1-4490-9551-b7340cb6c2ba\" });<\/script>\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis is huge,\u201d Trump\u2019s former campaign manager, Brad Pascale, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/parscale\/status\/2049494348698427772\">wrote<\/a> on X. \u201cIf states are aggressive, we could see a healthy majority in the House perpetually.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Election law experts and civil rights leaders said the exact same thing, only in mournful notes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cToday\u2019s decision is a bullet in the heart of the voting rights movement,\u201d Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement. \u201cThe Supreme Court has not just weakened a law, it has humiliated and dismantled the life\u2019s work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and every man and woman who marched, bled, and died for Black Americans to have an equal voice at the ballot box.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the decades before Congress enacted the VRA in 1965, lawmakers would draw maps that split or \u201ccracked\u201d minority \u2014 mostly Black \u2014 voters across multiple districts, all but ensuring that they would be unable to elect someone who would represent their interests. Congress sought to ban that practice with Section 2 of the VRA. And when the Supreme Court in 1980 ruled that plaintiffs suing under Section 2 had to show discriminatory intent, Congress amended the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/text\/52\/10301\">law<\/a> two years later to ban any voting \u201cstandard, practice, or procedure\u2026 which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/definitions\/uscode.php?width=840&amp;height=800&amp;iframe=true&amp;def_id=52-USC-3625706-244965480&amp;term_occur=999&amp;term_src=\">vote <\/a>on account of race or color.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Congress further wrote that a practice results in the denial of the right to vote when \u201cbased on the totality of circumstances,\u201d it&#8217;s shown that racial minorities \u201chave less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But Alito\u2019s ruling in Callais basically pretends Congress never did any of that, as Jay Willis <a href=\"https:\/\/ballsandstrikes.org\/scotus\/louisiana-v-callais-opinion-recap-voting-rights-act\/\">wrote<\/a> in Balls and Strikes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe Callais requirements come not from Congress, but from the imaginary version of the statute that Alito and company wish Congress had passed instead,\u201d Willis argued. \u201cThroughout, the majority is acting as an unelected, unaccountable miniature legislature whose members, as Kagan writes, made their \u2018own assessment\u2019 of what things the Voting Rights Act ought to protect against, and \u2018concluded that preventing racial vote dilution\u2019 is not among them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The VRA was a huge success, as UCLA Law professor Rick Hasen noted in the first of his many reactions to the Callais decision, \u201cleading to the election of scores of minority-preferred candidates in Congress and on the state and local level.\u201d Since the VRA\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2026\/04\/30\/us\/politics\/voting-rights-act-black-population-congress.html\">enactment<\/a>, the number of Black U.S. Representatives rose from less than 10 to more than 60, and those elected from the South \u2014 where roughly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/race-and-ethnicity\/fact-sheet\/facts-about-the-us-black-population\/\">half<\/a> of America\u2019s Black citizens reside \u2014 went from zero to nearly 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now those gains are at risk. Following Callais, Republican lawmakers in Alabama and Louisiana are now sprinting to redraw their congressional maps to eliminate all of the two states\u2019 majority-minority districts, which are currently <a href=\"https:\/\/sewell.house.gov\/\">held<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/figures.house.gov\/\">four<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/troycarter.house.gov\/\">Black<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/fields.house.gov\/\">Democrats<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils, by ending the protections of Section 2 of the act, which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation,\u201d Hasen wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s the culmination of the life\u2019s work of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have shown persistent resistance to the idea of the United States as a multiracial democracy, and a brazen willingness to reject Congress\u2019 judgment that fair representation for minority voters sometimes requires race-conscious legislation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hasen wondered why Alito obscured the real impact of his ruling behind reams of legal sophistry, calling him a \u201ccoward.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c[H]e\u2019s either lying to himself or to the rest of us about the future of the Voting Rights Act,\u201d he wrote in a separate piece for <a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/news-and-politics\/2026\/04\/supreme-court-analysis-coward-samuel-alito-callais.html?gift_token=2pziQ1GYS2aiGtPor0-CmA\">Slate<\/a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kagan noted that Alito turned the link between race and party preference \u2014 what used to be \u201cpractically an element of a vote-dilution claim\u201d \u2014 into an excuse. And relying on the Court\u2019s decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, which held that even though partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, it\u2019s a nonjusticiable political question beyond the courts\u2019 abilities to resolve, Alito said VRA plaintiffs need to \u201cdisentangle race from politics\u201d by proving that race inspired the line drawing, not partisanship.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good luck with that, said Kagan.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut under the majority\u2019s new test, when those two facts coexist \u2014 which is almost everywhere Section 2 has purchase \u2014 a plaintiff will have to show \u2014 contrary to Section 2\u2019s clear text and design \u2014 that the legislators were \u2018motivated by a discriminatory purpose.\u201d Kagan wrote. \u201cAnd that, as Section 2\u2019s drafters knew, is well-nigh impossible.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under the new standards \u2014which Alito cast as minor tweaks to the 40 years of jurisprudence built on the court\u2019s 1982 decision, <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/478\/30\/\">Thornburg v. Gingles<\/a> \u2014 minority voters challenging a racially gerrymandered map will need to provide an alternate version that still accomplishes the mapdrawers\u2019 original partisan goals. In other words, plaintiffs lose unless they can come up with another map that maintains the status quo, i.e. a new map that still favors Republicans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adam Serwer summarized the logic in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/ideas\/2026\/04\/vra-supreme-court-callais-decision\/686997\/?gift=SCYx-5scVta3-cr_IlgTyZdSdSqSnGW1D1xPpBPntmU\">The Atlantic<\/a> thusly: \u201cDiscriminating against Black voters is okay because they vote for Democrats.\u201d The Brennan Center for Justice\u2019s Michael Li <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/mcpli\/status\/2049595594088300703?s=46\">decried<\/a> its \u201cutter incoherence.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s remarkable how the Supreme Court went from \u2018partisan gerrymandering is bad but we can\u2019t figure out how to police it\u2019 in 2019 to \u2018nakedly partisan goals override the Voting Rights Act\u2019 in 2026,\u201d Li <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/mcpli.bsky.social\/post\/3mknwkagaa223\">wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-an-execution-44-years-in-the-making\">An execution 44 years in the making<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>While Alito may have delivered the finishing blow to the VRA, Roberts has stabbed at it for almost the entirety of his legal career. As a young attorney in President Ronald Reagan\u2019s Department of Justice, Roberts wrote a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/files\/news\/john-roberts\/accession-60-88-0498\/030-black-binder1\/folder030.pdf\">memo<\/a> arguing for a narrow reading of the VRA in general, and specifically against the ultimately-successful effort in Congress to amend Section 2 to prohibit voting laws that were racial discrimination in effect, and not just intentionally so.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Roberts began a far more successful assault on the VRA in 2013 with his majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder. That ruling invalidated Section 5 of the act, which forced states with histories of racial discrimination to get the DOJ\u2019s approval before amending voting laws.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since Shelby County, minority voter participation has dipped, as a 2024 paper in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/journal\/journal-of-public-economics\">Journal of Public Economics<\/a> showed. \u201cResults show that Black, relative to white, turnout among registered voters decreased by about 1 percentage point, with larger effects in counties with greater Black and Hispanic populations,\u201d the authors wrote.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then in 2021, Roberts joined Alito\u2019s majority opinion in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/20pdf\/19-1257_g204.pdf\">Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee<\/a>, which kneecapped Section 2\u2019s ability to block discriminatory voter registration laws.&nbsp; Like he later would in Callais, Alito nullified the law without saying it, as Hasen noted.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cJustice Alito made it impossible for plaintiffs to win their cases, leaving Section 2 on the books, but essentially toothless,\u201d Hasen wrote. \u201cSince Brnovich, as I showed in a <a href=\"https:\/\/yalelawjournal.org\/pdf\/134.5.Hasen_s86z9b69.pdf\">recent law review article<\/a>, no plaintiffs have brought successful suits under Section 2 challenging a law alleged to suppress votes.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Throughout the Roberts Court\u2019s systemic dismantling of civil rights protections, the conservative justices have argued that racism\u2019s stain on the nation\u2019s past has all but completely faded. \u201c[S]ocial change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South,\u201d Alito argued, pointing to a smaller racial gap in voter participation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBlack voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana,\u201d he wrote.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But as political scientist Kevin Morris <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/kevintmorris.bsky.social\/post\/3mko6amaz2k2q\">noted<\/a> on Bluesky, Altio cherry picked those figures; the two elections in question were in 2008 and 2012: when Barack Obama, our nation\u2019s first Black president, was on the ballot, and before Shelby County axed Section 5 of the VRA.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The idea that Americans only see political racism in black-and-white news reels during history documentaries is sadly belied by recent history. Just weeks before Callais, Republican lawmakers in Louisiana rushed to eliminate a county criminal court clerk position that Calvin Duncan, a Black man who was exonerated of a murder after spending decades behind bars, won with 68% of the vote.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And in the small, predominantly Black hamlet of Newbern, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.democracydocket.com\/analysis\/the-voting-rights-act-is-still-working-to-stop-racist-laws-the-supreme-court-might-not-care\/\">Alabama<\/a>, white residents handed the mayorship down to one another for decades until a Black man named Patrick Braxton filled out the paperwork to run in 2020. As the only candidate on the ballot, he automatically won. But instead of recognizing Braxton\u2019s victory, the white town officials locked him out of town hall and held a secret election to reinstall themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>NPR\u2019s Hansi Lo Wong <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2026\/04\/30\/nx-s1-5805050\/supreme-court-voting-rights-congressional-black-caucus\">predicts<\/a> Callais will pave the way for \u201cthe largest-ever decline in the number of Black representatives on Capitol Hill,\u201d one even bigger than the drop at the end of Reconstruction. And the impact might be even starker at the local and state level, the Brennan Center\u2019s Li <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/mcpli.bsky.social\/post\/3mkohith5gs2t\">noted<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg noted in her Shelby County <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/570\/529\/#tab-opinion-1970751\">dissent<\/a>, tossing out a civil rights law \u201cwhen it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Ashley Cleaves contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Legal experts, voting rights advocates, and even the VRA\u2019s loudest foes all agree with Justice Elena Kagan: \u201c[I]n fact, those \u2018updates\u2019 eviscerate the law.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":39783,"template":"","meta":{"content-type":"","header_eyebrow_text":"","header_subtitle":"","display_share_icons":true,"custom_share_text":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"last_updated":"2026-06-04 04:39:16","author_name":"","external_link":false,"external_link_url":"","related_links":[],"_display_featured_image":true,"footnotes":""},"article-type":[39],"state":[15],"topic":[43,54],"coauthors":[350],"class_list":["post-67932","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","article-type-from-our-desk","state-louisiana","topic-litigation","topic-redistricting"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/www.democracydocket.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Hollowed-Out-VRA-WEB-1024x577.png","yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.5 (Yoast SEO v27.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Alito says Supreme Court is just updating the VRA, not killing it. 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