WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court this morning in Louisiana v. Callais on whether to reverse a district court decision that held unconstitutional the map the Louisiana legislature enacted to remedy a prior violation of the Voting Rights Act, Constitutional Accountability Center Director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights, and Citizenship Program David H. Gans issued the following reaction:

The Voting Rights Act is the nation’s most important civil rights law that helps safeguard the multiracial democracy our Constitution guarantees. In this morning’s argument, the Court’s conservative wing seemed poised to gut the Voting Rights Act’s nationwide prohibition on discriminatory results, repeatedly suggesting that any use of race to remedy a state’s racially discriminatory maps is unconstitutional and that there has to be a time limit on voting rights remedies. This idea that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments—added to the Constitution to ensure that Black Americans would be full members of the body politic—bars legal remedies for racial vote dilution designed to cancel out Black voting strength turns the Constitution on its head.

The text and history of the Fifteenth Amendment give Congress broad powers to eradicate all forms of racial discrimination in voting, authorizing enforcement measures, such as the Voting Rights Act, to ensure that voters in communities of color have the equal right to elect representatives of their choice. The Framers of the Fifteenth Amendment understood that race mattered, and that made it critical to give Congress broad powers to squelch efforts to suppress or cancel out the votes of Black Americans. In this morning’s oral argument, the Court’s conservative Justices turned a blind eye to this core part of the Fifteenth Amendment’s text and history.

The Voting Rights Act was passed to vindicate the Fifteenth Amendment’s promise of a participatory democracy open to all regardless of race. The Court should honor the text and history of the Fifteenth Amendment and reject the attack on the Voting Rights Act in Callais.