Supreme Court Overturns Racial Progress

By Dr. Wornie Reed, Ph.D.

With the passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965, the United States seemed to be moving towards a multi-racial democracy. However, forces opposed to this direction of the country were aided by a post-Civil Rights era retreat from racial justice that eventually created a right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Once again, as it had done at the end of Reconstruction in the 19th century, the Supreme Court began to play a prominent role in holding back the tide of racial progress. The 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Shelby v Holder, gutted the Voting Rights Act, the most important of the Civil Rights bills. With permission granted by this decision, States began to make it harder for African Americans and other minorities to vote—e. g., closing thousands of polling places in African American communities, purging voter rolls, and enacting strict voter ID laws.

While the Supreme Court was busy propping up Donald Trump, they continued their attack on civil rights. In 2023, the Supreme Court decimated affirmative action in higher education. In 2024, the Court overturned the Chevron Rule. The Chevron rule was a landmark 1984 Supreme Court doctrine mandating that unless Congress specified otherwise federal courts must defer to a federal agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute.

When the Supreme Court reversed itself on this rule, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights issued a statement saying, “Communities across the country depend on federal agencies to interpret and enforce civil rights laws and protections effectively, and today’s ruling gravely hinders their ability to do so. This devastating decision could have drastic implications for the government’s ability to deliver on civil rights for the American people and for our democracy.”

And last week, in its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court continued its’ dismantling of the Voting Rights Act by virtually eliminating Section 2, the last key leg of the VRA. Section 2 prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups.

To see the crassness of this decision, let’s look at a little history. In Milligan, in June of 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s Congressional map—with many black voters packed into one Congressional district–violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting black political power. And in September of 2023, to our surprise, the Supreme Court rejected Alabama’s appeal in Milligan and reaffirmed that the State must draw a second (black) opportunity district.

Apparently, in Louisiana v. Callais, the six Right-Wing members of the Supreme Court decided to correct their unintended support for racial justice in Milligan. The case concerns whether Louisiana’s new congressional map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. In 2022, after the State redrew its congressional districts, a federal judge ruled that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it did not include an additional majority-black district (as in Alabama).

So, the State of Louisiana drew a new map that contained such a district, which was challenged as a racial gerrymander by a group of self-described “non-African Americans.” To reach their desired position, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s second predominantly black district was an unconstitutional gerrymander, effectively reversing its decision three years ago in Milligan.

The Supreme Court has demonstrated that it is not a reliable arbiter of constitutional protection when it comes to race.