The Last Voting Rights Act

"Callais will foreclose nearly all federal voting-rights claims aimed at ensuring minority political participation through fair districting. Over successive redistricting cycles, it is poised to collapse Black representation across the South in ways not seen since the end of Reconstruction."

"The bigger shift is that Callais also closes off the possibility that a future Congress could respond with new legislation combating racial discrimination in the electoral system. Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion rests on an interpretation of the Fifteenth Amendment that effectively bars Congress from remedying the very inequities Callais unleashes."

"Callais is not merely an assault on a landmark statute, or just another step in the Court's and America's retreat from the multiracial democracy envisioned by the Constitution's Reconstruction amendments. It is something more ambitious and insidious—a consolidation of judicial supremacy."

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been eroded through both attrition and action, culminating in the Callais v. Louisiana decision. This ruling severely limits federal voting-rights claims, threatening Black representation in the South. More significantly, it restricts Congress's ability to enact new legislation against racial discrimination in elections. Justice Alito's majority opinion interprets the Fifteenth Amendment in a way that prevents Congress from addressing the inequities that the amendment was designed to combat, marking a significant shift in judicial power and undermining multiracial democracy.

Read at The Atlantic