SCOTUS Just Rewrote the Voting Rights Act Without Saying So

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The Supreme Court just struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, holding that the state’s second Black-majority district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

In this ruling, the Court did something very concrete: It rewrote the test for complying with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) — the provision that allows voters to challenge district maps that dilute minority voting power and deny minority voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. 

Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion insisted Section 2 remains constitutional and complying with it can still justify some race-conscious districting. But the Court simultaneously narrowed the path for proving a Section 2 violation so severely that, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, the majority has effectively “gutted” the VRA while claiming to leave it standing. 

The New York Times captured that contradiction in its first coverage: The conservative majority upheld the act in name, but Kagan accused it of stripping away the law’s practical force. 

All of this is extremely consequential and requires a deeper look.

Did the Court ‘Gut’ the VRA, as Kagan Claims?

The careful answer is: It did not gut the entire act in formal terms, but it may have gutted Section 2 as a practical redistricting remedy.

That distinction matters.

The VRA has several parts. Section 5 — the preclearance regime that required certain jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to get federal approval before changing voting laws — was effectively disabled by the Court in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. After that, Section 2 became the main surviving federal tool for challenging racially discriminatory election systems after the fact. 

In 2021, in Brnovich v. DNC, the Court narrowed Section 2 claims involving voting rules like ballot collection and precinct policies. Today’s decision goes after the other major category: redistricting vote-dilution claims.

That is why this is a major earthquake.

Not because Section 2 is dead on paper. It is not. But because the Court has now made it much harder to use Section 2 to require states to draw districts in which minority voters have a realistic chance to elect their candidates of choice.

What the Court Actually Held

The case grew out of Louisiana’s six-district congressional map. Black residents make up roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population, but the state’s original post-2020 map had only one Black-majority congressional district. 

Black voters sued under Section 2, arguing that the map diluted Black voting power. A federal court agreed that Louisiana likely had to create a second majority-Black district. Louisiana then drew a new map with two majority-Black districts.

That second map was challenged by a group of voters who argued the state had gone too far and had used race too heavily in drawing the district. Today, the Supreme Court agreed in a 6–3 decision along partisan lines.

Justice Alito’s majority opinion frames the case as a racial-gerrymandering case under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The Court says Louisiana intentionally configured District 6 to exceed 50 percent Black voting-age population because it believed Section 2 required that result. 

That intentional use of race triggered strict scrutiny, requiring a compelling state interest. The question then became whether complying with Section 2 justified the state’s use of race. The Court’s answer: not here.

The court now says that the state may defend a redrawn congressional map by saying, in effect: We were not trying to weaken Black voting power; we were trying to protect Republican incumbents, preserve a Republican seat distribution, or maximize partisan advantage.

The majority’s key move is this: It says Section 2 does not simply ask whether a minority group’s voting power has been diluted in practice. Instead, the Court says Section 2 must be interpreted in a way that focuses on whether the circumstances give rise to a strong inference of intentional racial discrimination. The majority reasons the 15th Amendment itself prohibits only intentional discrimination and that Congress’s enforcement power cannot be used to create a remedy that goes too far beyond that constitutional prohibition.

That is the heart of the decision.

For decades, Section 2 has been understood as a results test. Congress amended the law in 1982 precisely because the Supreme Court had made discriminatory intent too hard to prove. 

The statute asks whether, under the “totality of circumstances,” minority voters have less opportunity than others to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice. 

The majority today does not erase that language. But it changes what plaintiffs must show to make it meaningful.

The New Rules

The Court says it is merely “updating” the Gingles framework, the long-standing test for Section 2 redistricting claims. But the updates are substantial.

First, plaintiffs can no longer simply show that a reasonably compact majority-minority district could be drawn. The majority says their proposed maps must satisfy all of the state’s legitimate districting goals, including not only traditional criteria like compactness and county lines, but also the state’s political goals, including partisan advantage and incumbent protection.

That is a major change.

They just said the quiet part out loud.

In practical terms, the Court has now said the quiet part in legal language. The court now says the state may defend a redrawn congressional map by saying, in effect: We were not trying to weaken Black voting power; we were trying to protect Republican incumbents, preserve a Republican seat distribution, or maximize partisan advantage. 

Read that again, because I had to read it several times. This Court just said it’s fine to redistrict to protect incumbents and maximize partisan advantage.

And under today’s ruling, to do just that is not treated as an embarrassing admission. To the contrary, it is presented as a legally valid defense. Alito writes that because partisan-gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in federal court under Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), courts must treat partisan advantage “like any other race-neutral aim” and therefore as “a constitutionally permissible criterion” that states may pursue in redistricting. 

The opinion goes further: If a state’s goals include “a target partisan distribution of voters” or “a specific margin of victory for certain incumbents,” then Section 2 plaintiffs must offer alternative maps that satisfy those same goals just as well. 

In other words, if a state openly says its goal is to lock in partisan advantage, the VRA plaintiff has to prove minority voting power can be protected without disturbing that partisan advantage.

That is the earthquake inside the earthquake. 

The Court is not merely tolerating partisan gerrymandering in the background; it is allowing partisan gerrymandering to become a shield against VRA liability. 

Second, plaintiffs must now “disentangle race from politics.” If Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats and white voters overwhelmingly support Republicans, the old Section 2 framework treated that racial bloc voting as central evidence of vote dilution. The majority now says that in a two-party system where race and party are closely correlated, plaintiffs must show that the relevant bloc voting cannot be explained by party affiliation.

That sounds technical. It is not. 

It is potentially devastating to Section 2 claims in the real world because the places where Section 2 most often matters are precisely the places where race and party are closely aligned.

Third, the Court says the “totality of circumstances” inquiry must focus much more heavily on present-day evidence of intentional discrimination. Historical discrimination and continuing social effects now get much less weight. The majority criticized the lower court for relying on Louisiana’s “sordid history” of discrimination while discounting the absence of recent proof that Black voters faced intentional discrimination.

Put those together and the new rule becomes clear:

A plaintiff cannot merely show that minority voters are politically cohesive, that white voters vote as a bloc usually defeating their preferred candidates, and that a reasonably drawn district would give minority voters a fair opportunity to elect. The plaintiff must now overcome the state’s partisan justifications, disentangle race from party, satisfy the state’s own political objectives, and point toward something close to intentional discrimination.

That is a very different Section 2.

Kagan’s Dissent: The Core Argument

Justice Kagan’s dissent is blunt.

She says the majority has not merely adjusted doctrine. It has changed the statute. In her words, the majority’s “‘updates’ eviscerate” Section 2. She argues the Court has taken a law Congress deliberately designed to focus on discriminatory results and turned it on its head while pretending not to do so.

Her strongest point is historical. In 1980, in City of Mobile v. Bolden, the Court made vote-dilution claims extremely difficult by requiring proof of discriminatory intent. Congress responded in 1982 by amending Section 2 to make clear that plaintiffs did not need to prove intent. Kagan walks through that history and emphasizes the statutory phrase “results in,” arguing Congress deliberately chose an effects-based test because discriminatory intent was so easy for legislatures to hide.

Kagan’s view is that today’s majority has essentially revived the very approach Congress rejected.

She also attacks the majority’s race-versus-party move. Before today, the fact that Black voters and white voters often preferred different candidates was central to proving vote dilution. Now, because those racial voting patterns often overlap with party preference, the majority says plaintiffs must somehow separate race from politics. Kagan’s answer is that this turns the real-world evidence of vote dilution into a defense against the claim.

That is the key conceptual divide.

For the majority, when race and party overlap, courts must be careful not to let plaintiffs smuggle partisan-gerrymandering claims into court under the label of racial vote dilution.

For Kagan, when race and party overlap, that is often exactly why minority voters need Section 2 protection in the first place.

What This Means for 2026 Midterms and Beyond

The immediate effect is Louisiana. The state will likely lose the second majority-Black district that elected Democrat Cleo Fields. The result voids Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district and boosts Republican chances.

But Louisiana is only the first-order effect.

The broader effect is that Republican-controlled states now have a powerful new argument for revisiting or defending maps that reduce minority opportunity districts. 

If a state can characterize its choices as partisan rather than racial, and if plaintiffs must prove that race rather than party explains the harm, Section 2 becomes much harder to use.

This lands in the middle of an already intense redistricting war. Just a few days ago, the Court formally reinstated a Texas map favorable to Republicans for the November elections; the map could shift up to five House seats from Democratic to Republican control.

The timing matters. If this decision had come in an off-year, its full effect might have played out slowly through litigation and legislative sessions. Coming now, it gives state legislatures and litigants an immediate new weapon. 

Some states may try to redraw. Others may use the decision to defend existing maps. Still others may ask courts to revisit remedial maps imposed under the old understanding of Section 2.

That does not mean every map will change before November. Election deadlines, state procedures, candidate filing periods, ongoing litigation, and judicial reluctance to change rules too close to an election will all matter. 

But legally, the ground has shifted.

How Big an Earthquake?

This is not Shelby County in form. Shelby County took out the operating formula for preclearance, disabling Section 5 as a practical matter. Today’s decision does not erase Section 2 from the US Code.

But in redistricting, this may be close to Shelby County in practical effect.

The reason is that Section 2’s redistricting power depended on a workable results test. If minority voters were sufficiently numerous and compact to form a district, politically cohesive, and usually defeated by majority bloc voting, courts could look at the totality of circumstances and require a remedy. 

That framework was never simple. It did not guarantee proportional representation. But it gave minority voters a path.

The Court has now narrowed that path dramatically.

The majority says it is preserving Section 2 by bringing it into alignment with constitutional limits. Kagan says the Court is destroying Section 2 while pretending to update it. 

The better immediate read is this: Section 2 survives, but the version that survives is much more favorable to states defending maps and much less favorable to plaintiffs challenging vote dilution.

That is why “gutting” is not just activist rhetoric, though it needs precision. The Court did not hold that Section 2 is unconstitutional. It did not say race can never be considered in redistricting. It did not formally overrule Allen v. Milligan, the 2023 case in which the Court upheld a Section 2 challenge to Alabama’s map. The majority insists Allen remains intact, distinguishing it partly on the ground that Alabama did not defend its map as an effort to achieve political goals in the same way Louisiana did here.

But the decision makes Allen look less like a reaffirmation of Section 2 and more like a temporary pause before today’s retrenchment.

Can Democrats Use This Too?

Yes — but not equally.

In theory, today’s ruling arms any state with a new defense: If challenged under Section 2, the state can say its map was driven by permissible partisan goals rather than racial discrimination. A Democratic-controlled state could make the same argument a Republican-controlled state can: We were not targeting racial minorities; we were pursuing partisan advantage, protecting incumbents, or designing districts to achieve a preferred political outcome.

So, at the level of doctrine, this is not a Republican-only tool.

But in practice, the ruling is likely to favor Republicans for three reasons.

First, the Section 2 districts most vulnerable after today are disproportionately in Republican-controlled Southern states, where Black voters are heavily Democratic and where VRA litigation has historically been one of the few tools capable of forcing states to create or preserve minority-opportunity districts. That is why the immediate consequence in Louisiana is likely the loss of a Democratic-held Black-majority district, and why the AP described the ruling as boosting Republican chances.

Second, the majority’s race-versus-party logic favors the party that benefits when minority voters are treated as Democrats rather than as minority voters. In much of the South, Black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic. Under the Court’s new framework, a state can argue that it was not diluting Black voting strength because of race; it was simply pursuing Republican advantage. That distinction may sound artificial in the real world, but legally it now matters a great deal.

Third, Republicans control more of the states where mid-decade redistricting could be used to squeeze additional seats out of maps already shaped by race-party polarization. This ruling comes amid broader redistricting fights and is expected to benefit the GOP in upcoming elections; Axios reported the ruling could improve Republican House prospects by opening the door to additional map changes.

That does not mean Democrats have no counterplay. Blue states can also be aggressive. California, Illinois, Maryland, New York, and other Democratic states may look for ways to maximize Democratic seats while framing their choices as partisan rather than racial. The ruling gives them some cover too.

But there is a catch: Many Democratic states already have independent commissions, state constitutional limits, or courts more willing to police partisan excess under state law. And in many blue states, the minority groups protected by Section 2 are often part of the Democratic coalition. That means Democrats may gain less by weakening Section 2 than Republicans do.

The Court did not announce, “We hereby gut the Voting Rights Act.” Courts rarely speak that way. The majority wrote in the language of doctrinal refinement: strict scrutiny, compelling interest, Gingles preconditions, disentangling race from politics, current conditions, constitutional avoidance. But the effect may be much sharper than the tone.

So the answer is: Democrats can use the ruling if they choose to go to war over redistricting. But the battlefield is tilted. The decision helps whichever party controls the mapmaking process and wants to prioritize partisan advantage over minority-opportunity districts. Given the current geography of race, party, and state legislative control, that means the immediate and larger benefit likely runs to Republicans.

The Bottom Line

Today’s decision is a major victory for states that want more freedom to draw aggressive partisan maps, even when the result weakens minority voting power.

It is a major defeat for voting-rights plaintiffs who rely on Section 2 to challenge district maps.

And it is a major moment in the Roberts Court’s long reshaping of voting-rights law.

The Court did not announce, “We hereby gut the Voting Rights Act.” Courts rarely speak that way. The majority wrote in the language of doctrinal refinement: strict scrutiny, compelling interest, Gingles preconditions, disentangling race from politics, current conditions, constitutional avoidance.

But the effect may be much sharper than the tone.

A statute built to ask whether minority voters have equal electoral opportunity has now been narrowed by a Court increasingly suspicious of race-conscious remedies, increasingly tolerant of partisan gerrymandering, and increasingly willing to treat the overlap of race and party as a reason to deny relief rather than a reason to examine the map more closely.

That is the earthquake.

Not the formal death of the Voting Rights Act. The transformation of what remains of it.

As a service to our readers, we curate exceptional stories through partnerships with outside writers and thinkers. Michael D. Sellers is a former CIA officer currently working as a criminal defense and civil rights investigator. This column has been adapted with the author’s permission from his substack Deeper Look with Michael Sellers.