The Supreme Court is going to gut the Voting Rights Act and

Conservative Supreme Court justices appeared likely to strip Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of any power to protect against racially discriminatory redistricting during arguments in Louisiana v. You are silent on Wednesday.

Such a decision could have monumental consequences for the future of Black political representation throughout the South, and potentially allowing Republican legislatures to redraw maps in a way that helps realize President Donald Trump’s goal of one-party government in Washington.

The complicated case centers on the question of whether and how the use of race is permitted when drawing congressional maps. The case arose from a challenge brought by white Louisianans to a reclamation map the state legislature drew in 2024 that created a majority-Black second district. The legislature drew that map in response to a district court ruling in Robinson v. Louisiana that the initial map adopted by the state in 2022 violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits election practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, when it failed to draw a second district. White Louisianans then challenged the new corrective map for discriminating against them, and a district court agreed.

The case, or a version of it, was heard in the Supreme Court earlier this year. In March, both the Black Robinson plaintiffs and the state of Louisiana argued before the Supreme Court that the map featuring a majority-black second district should stand. But the court declined to issue a ruling and instead ordered a re-argument with a new question: whether Section 2 is unconstitutional. Louisiana quickly switched sides to argue that it was unconstitutional, and the Trump administration joined in introducing a different mechanism to gut Section 2.

During arguments, it seemed unlikely that the conservative justices would go so far as to find Section 2 unconstitutional across the board. Instead, they focused on the Trump administration’s argument that partisan considerations should trump racial discrimination when drawing maps. This would make Section 2 cases effectively impossible to bring in the future.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits electoral practices that lead to “a denial or limitation of the right… to vote” and leave minority voters with “fewer opportunities… to participate in political processes and to elect representatives of their choice.” In 1982, Congress amended Section 2 to require courts to examine the racially discriminatory effects of a district map and not just the question of whether the map as drawn was intentionally discriminatory. Nearly all majority-black districts in the South were drawn after this amendment.

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When bringing a Section 2 racial discrimination claim to court, plaintiffs must show that a given map prevented a racial minority from electing a candidate of their choice where there is geographic racial segregation and significant racially polarized voting, where, for example, black and white voters predominantly vote for one party over the other.

However, the Trump administration now argues that courts cannot distinguish racially polarized voting from partisan voting in the South, where black voters are almost all Democrats and white voters are almost all Republicans. Since the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause determined that federal courts could not rule on claims of partisan gerrymandering, a Republican legislature can draw a map that favors Republicans, even at the expense of black voters, because its true motivation is partisanship, the Trump administration argues.

When courts hear Section 2 challenges, they must consider whether a corrective map that creates a majority-minority district provides the same partisan balance as the map submitted by the state, according to the Trump administration. This would allow Southern states to eliminate existing majority black and Latino districts by arguing that they did so solely for partisan reasons and thus effectively neutralize Section 2.

This solution would also allow conservative justices to tell themselves that they are not contradicting the 2022 decision in Allen v. Milligan, a nearly identical case that required Alabama to draw a second majority-black district with a 5-4 ruling, argued Deputy Attorney General Hashim Moopan.

Nor would they need to overturn the 1985 precedent in Thornburg v. Gingles that established a multi-part test that courts use to review Section 2 districting cases. Rather, it would be a “clarification,” Moopan said in response to a leading question from Judge Amy Coney Barrett seeking that same answer.

In Allen v. Milligan, Chief Justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s three liberals in defending Section 2. Now that they are presented with a different (and better, in their opinion) argument; It looks like they’re both ready to switch positions and gut him.

Questioning NAACP Legal Defense Fund President Janai Nelson arguing on behalf of black Louisianans, Roberts noted that the outcome of Allen’s decision was unique to “Alabama’s particular challenge.”

“We were looking at Alabama’s suggestion about how to apply their body of evidence under existing precedent,” Roberts said.

And in questioning Moopan, Roberts sought confirmation that the Trump administration’s argument would be “consistent” with Roberts’ decision in the Allen case.

For his part, Kavanaugh focused primarily on two issues: the question of partisanship raised by the Trump administration and whether Section 2 should have an end date.

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“Court cases in a variety of contexts have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes for a long period of time, decades in some cases, but that they should not be indefinite. They should have an end point. What exactly do you think the end point should be?” Kavanaugh asked Nelson.

Since Section 2 does not require race-based remedies and would be self-voiding when racially polarized voting ceases, it does not need a full stop, Nelson responded. If the court decides a full stop is necessary, it should give advance notice, he argued. He further noted, correctly, that “there is no precedent to suggest that a law should dissolve itself simply because it must require a racial remedy.”

Signaling his clear interest in the Trump administration’s position, Kavanaugh asked each of the four lawyers who argued before the court what they thought about the central argument that courts should consider partisan political considerations about race when drawing maps.

If the court decides to adopt the Trump administration’s proposal and gut Section 2, or if it goes even further and deems it unconstitutional, the effect will be “catastrophic,” Nelson said.

“If we take Louisiana as an example, every member of Congress who is black was elected in a VRA opportunity district,” Nelson said. “We only have the diversity that we see throughout the South, for example, because of litigation that forced the creation of opportunity districts under the Voting Rights Act.”

Changing the way courts review Section 2 or declaring it unconstitutional would call into question maps with majority-minority districts across the South. If the court rules in Louisiana against Callais before the end of 2025, Republican legislatures could remove up to 19 of them before the 2026 elections. This would largely fulfill Trump’s desire to increase Republican majorities in the House of Representatives so that he never faces congressional oversight.

Nelson gave a stern warning to the justices should they issue such a decision to reverse decades-old precedent.

“The court said it should be concerned about changing its decisions or rejecting stare decisis in cases involving a sensitive political context like this one,” Nelson said. “That calls into question the court’s legitimacy in a unique way… Any further neutralization of Section 2 would resurrect the 15th Amendment as a mere scroll promise.”