The Supreme Court is about to give a final blow to a 60 -year law.

The march for the vote rights of Selma, Alabama, to the capital of Montgomery in 1965 was not destined to lead to the approval of the Voting Rights Law. But then came the horror of the scenes on the Edmund Pettus bridge, where the police fractured the skull of John Lewis and the organizer beat the organizer Amelia Boynton unconscious, with much of the violence trapped by the camera. Influenced public opinion: President Lyndon Johnson delivered the draft Voting Rights to Congress shortly after, and became law on August 6, 1965.

“Then, we will move step by step, often painfully but, I believe, with a clear vision, along the way to American freedom,” Johnson said by signing the bill.

Sixty years later, opponents of the Voting Rights Law have moved step by step, often painfully, vice versa on that path. In the hands of conservative opponents of vote rights, the Supreme Court has submitted the Death Voting Rights Law for a thousand cuts. Some of these cuts have been small, such as limiting how the courts consider the challenges presented under the law. And some have been great, as in the 2013 decision in Shelby v. Holder who ended the requirement of certain states with a history of discrimination to present electoral changes and maps of the district to the Department of Justice for approval.

But now the Court seems to be ready for a final cut, to kill the last remaining piece of the act that allows people to challenge racially discriminatory electoral practices.

On the night of August 1, the Court published its informative question for re -elected in the case of Louisiana v. Callais, now called Callais v. Landry That question, which is destined to instruct lawyers on which subject is under debate, asked if the “intentional creation of Louisiana of a second majority of the majority of the district of Congress violates the thirteenth or decimocular amendments to the Constitution of the United States.” This now establishes arguments on whether section 2 of the Voting Rights Law, the last remaining bastion of the law after Shelby County is unconstitutional to require the use of the race in some cases of redistribution of districts. The court will listen to arguments on October 15, early enough for a decision that could affect the intermediate works of 2026.

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Section 2 prohibits the electoral practices that lead to “a denial or summary of the right … to vote” and that leave minority voters with “less opportunities … to participate in political processes and choose representatives of their choice” that white voters. According to the law, people can challenge the electoral practices that believe they violate that law in court, if practices supposedly violate voters or deny representation through Gerrymandering.

A decision that declares that section 2 unconstitutional would leave the law without teeth and threaten the existence of minority representation, particularly black representation, throughout the south.

“If this is how you are going to go, it will be Shelby County with steroids,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Harvard University Law professor. “This will be the most catastrophic moment for minority voters since the 1870s or 1880s.”

Louisiana v. Callais first appeared before the Court in 2025 as part of a series of cases of the Voting Law of years that are derived from the redistribution of districts of Congress 2021 of the State. The initial map adopted by the state government dominated by White and Republicans included only a seven black majority district, although the black population represents a third of the state population. Louisianans Negros brought a challenge of section 2 to the map, saying that he violated section 2 by denying a second black majority seat when a cohesive and compact district could be drawn. They won before a panel of the Court of Appeals of three judges.

To meet the ruling, the state government administered by Republicans reduced its maps to accommodate a second black majority district, but also used the occasion to underpin districts held by Republicans Mike Johnson and representative Julia Letlow. The new district took a strange form, which extended 250 miles from Shreveport to Baton Rouge.

A group of “non -African” plaintiffs challenged the new district for being attracted with too much dependence on the breed: while the Voting Rights Law requires that the breed be taken into account in certain cases, the preceding Supreme Court affirms that the consideration of the breed cannot be the main factor, or otherwise it could violate the clause of equal protection of the 14th amendment.

Both the state of Louisiana and the original black plaintiffs, represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, were found on the same side defending the new map of the district. Louisiana said that the lines for the new district were drawn according to politics, a allowed factor, not the breed. The Supreme Court heard arguments in March, at the time when race or politics predominate. But he decided not to issue a decision at the end of the term. Instead, he announced that he would rehearse the case with a new question to come. Now we know that question.

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Even raise the question of whether section 2 of the Voting Rights Law violates the amendments 14 and 15 has triggered the alarms of the alarms in the community rights community. A great reason why Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote in concurrence for a very similar case in 2022.

In Allen v. Milligan, the court confirmed a ruling from the lower court that demanded Alabama to draw a second black majority district under section 2 for a 5-4 vote. In dissent, Judge Clarence Thomas argued that, despite the re -authorization of the Congress and the updates of the Voting Rights Law, section 2 cannot continue forever in the future. Since the law was amended in 1982, any discriminatory practice that was destined to remedy are no longer applicable 42 years later, he argued, so he must have a completion date, since “it lacks such limiting health principles.” Kavanaugh agreed, adding indications of the arguments that future cases could bring.

“The authority to carry out the redistribution of districts cannot be extended indefinitely in the future,” Kavanaugh wrote. “But Alabama did not raise that temporary argument in this court, and therefore I would not consider it at this time.”

During oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais in March, Kavanaugh focused almost completely on this “temporal argument.”

“In the Law on Equal Protection, the Court said for a long time that the corrective action based on recovery must have a logical final point, it must be limited over time, it must be a temporary issue. How is that principle applied to section 2?” Kavanaugh asked.

And now the court is again loud that case with the question of the constitutionality of section 2 raised.

“There is a disagreement in court and want to use this case to resolve that disagreement,” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola’s Law Faculty.

If Kavanaugh’s “temporary argument” is in the heart of this disagreement, then there may now be five votes to largely limit the scope of section 2 or kill it completely. That could have a cataclysmic impact on the minority representation in Congress, the state legislatures, the municipal councils, the County Boards and any other office that depends on the District Line drawing.

“If this happened, it would mean that the scores and dozens of districts that all believe that they are now protected by section 2 would no longer have any particular reason to exist in the way they do,” Stephanopolous said.

Just look at what happened after section 5 of the Disabled Court of the Voting Rights Law in your Decision of Shelby County. The southern states, whose discrimination stories required them to obtain changes in the voting policies approved before promulgating them, moved quickly to promulgate restrictive voting rules. In North Carolina, a federal court determined that Republican legislators had “objective[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision ”and annulled their electoral law by virtue of section 2.

Section 2 was then, and it is still a tool available for the plaintiffs to bring cases of racial discrimination and dilution. In Shelby County, Roberts explicitly declared that section 2 remained a “permanent” resource for racially discriminatory actions, even if section 5 would be disabled. When Alabama and Louisiana reduced their maps in 2021, the courts forced them to re -draw them with additional black majority seats.

“If this is how it seems to go, it will be Shelby County with steroids. This will be the most catastrophic moment for minority voters since the 1870s or 1880s.”

– Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Harvard Law School

But now the answer to that case of Louisiana threatens to put an end to what Roberts only 12 years ago called “permanent.” If the Court considers that section 2 is unconstitutional, it could lead to a racial version of what the country is currently seeing with partisan gerrymandering after the court said it could not be litigated in federal courts in its 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common cause.

The black and Latin major districts throughout the south and beyond could be eliminated. The legislative representation of the black congress and the State that withdrew after 1965 could be completely reversed with the elimination of the 11 black major districts, all held by the Democrats, in the South states controlled by the Republican Party and innumerable state legislative districts of the black majority. If the court argues that the use of the breed in the drawing districts is unconstitutional, then these states would have free reins, even legal justification, to eliminate these districts.

“We would quickly see a return to all the white delegations of Congress and in state legislative chambers and local maps in many parts of the country,” Stephanopolous said. “This would be a much larger treatment than Shelby County. It would apply throughout the country.”

And although “the most likely result is a devastating result”, based on the fact that the court is auditing this case again with the new constitutionality question, according to Stephanopolous. It is not an inevitable conclusion.

“This could be a big problem at the end of the day, but it could also not,” said Levitt.

There are any number of ramp For the court to take in Louisiana v. Callais to avoid demolishing section 2. could find that the policy predominated on the breed when drawing the new district, or that the State should simply draw a new district that is more compact or restrict the use of section 2 without killing it completely.

But these were, in general, potential options available for the judges when they heard the case for the first time this spring. Instead, they chose to pray the case with a new question.

“They have presented a difficult case for themselves from nowhere,” Levitt said.

The final result may be the end of the Voting Rights Law and the full realization of representative democracy that gave life in the last 60 years. It would mark that the country gets out of that path to American freedom.