WASHINGTON, DC – Following today’s decision at the Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais, a case in which the Court considered 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 Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, once again, has gutted the historic protections of the Voting Rights Act, the latest step in what Justice Elena Kagan’s dissenting opinion rightly called “the judicial project to destroy the Voting Rights Act.”  Today’s decision, together with prior Roberts Court rulings in Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich v. DNC, hollows out the Voting Rights Act and all but eliminates the nation’s most important protector of a multiracial democracy.  Tragically, one likely effect of the ruling is to greenlight new forms of voting discrimination and embolden states to draw redistricting maps that dilute the voting strength of communities of color—precisely what the Voting Rights Act was meant to prevent.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, turns a blind eye to the text and history of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.  Insisting on a race-blind misreading of both the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act, Alito’s opinion ignores all the ways that race-consciousness is baked into the Fifteenth Amendment.  As CAC’s brief in Callais demonstrated, against the backdrop of a political system divided along racial lines, the Fifteenth Amendment sought to prohibit all forms of racial discrimination in voting, recognizing that the right to vote was necessary to protect Black Americans.  The Fifteenth Amendment gave Congress broad powers to make multiracial democracy a reality, empowering Congress to stamp out any efforts to deny or abridge Black voting strength.  Justice Alito’s opinion does violence to this part of the Fifteenth Amendment’s text and history, insisting that Congress’s power in this area is “limited.”

Justice Alito’s treatment of the Voting Rights Act is equally lawless.  He construes the Voting Rights Act’s nationwide ban on voting practices that result in the denial of equal political opportunities to communities of color to impose a high burden tantamount to proof of intentional racial discrimination—precisely what Congress amended the Voting Rights Act in 1982 to reject.  This hollows out one of the most important parts of the Voting Rights Act and does violence to Congress’s considered judgment—employing its express constitutional powers—that a ban on discriminatory results was necessary to check continuing voting discrimination in the states.

The Supreme Court’s duty is to uphold our Constitution’s text, history, and values.  Tragically in Callais, the Supreme Court failed this basic test of fidelity, undermining both the Constitution and one of our most important federal laws protecting the equal right to vote.