The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has spent years chipping away at Voting Rights Act. The majority decision, by 6 votes to 3, weakening article 2 of the law, was not a surprise. In fact, it was the decision that was expected.
Please take advantage of this free article. You can support our work by becoming a subscriber.
The knee-jerk reaction is that Democrats need to pass new voting rights legislation, but that a new bill would at some point end up before the conservative Supreme Court, meaning the country could find itself in the same situation again in a few years.
However, the court did not rule that Section 2 was unconstitutional and opened the door to gerrymandering based on partisanship, not race.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin responded to the Supreme Court’s decision and offered a solution.
Raskin said in a statement:
The Supreme Court has completed the effective demolition of the Voting Rights Act. The VRA was the crown jewel of the 20th century civil rights movement, born from the blood of protesters and freedom riders and repeatedly reauthorized by bipartisan majorities in Congress. In an act of extraordinary and cynical judicial activism, six justices have now devastated Congress’s expressed goals, effectively rewriting and neutralizing Section 2 of the VRA by requiring the very standard of proof to file a VRA claim—a demonstration of intentional racial discrimination—that Congress explicitly rejected in 1982.
The Court has now completed the work it began by removing Section 5 preclearance protections in Shelby County v. Holder. This project is a disgrace to the federal judiciary and a permanent stain on the legacy of this Court. Combined with the Court’s 2019 decision in Rucho v. With Common Cause barring federal courts from policing partisan gerrymandering, today’s ruling is a disaster for American democracy. Partisan gerrymanders are now untouchable, as are racial vote dilution schemes that exclude minority voters from the political process as long as they are conveniently redesignated as partisan gerrymanders. Southern Republican legislatures are already preparing to divide and eliminate majority-minority districts at all levels of government. The Court has made the world a safer place for these horrible, racist gerrymanders. This moment resembles the end of political reconstruction in the 19th century.
The bottom line according to the Roberts Court is that the deliberate inclusion of an African-American or Hispanic-majority district to promote fair representation is a presumptively unconstitutional “racial gerrymander,” while the deliberate destruction of an African-American or Hispanic-majority district is perfectly legal if its stated purpose is the expansion and entrenchment of a “partisan gerrymander.” This is a huge defeat for American democracy.
I call for Congress to create independent, nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide to permanently take mapping out of the hands of politicians, and for Congress to authorize multi-member congressional districts with proportional representation systems to prevent exclusions and partisan drowning across the country. Congress must act now to pull the country out of the abyss of constitutional double standards and partisan authoritarianism.
A national ban on gerrymandering is the answer. All congressional districts should be drawn by independent commissions.
Remember, the Court’s standard is partisan gerrymandering, which this ruling says is allowed, but if Congress bans partisan gerrymandering, the new law will be Supreme Court-proof because the conservative majority will have sidelined itself.
Democrats can continue to play games with voting rights legislation that winds up in court, or they can aim bigger and strengthen democracy by banning gerrymandering as soon as they gain control of Congress and the White House.
It’s time for Democrats to walk the talk and aim big to protect voting rights.