Supreme Court hollows out a landmark law that had protected minority
voting rights for 6 decades
[May 01, 2026]
By GARY FIELDS and KIM CHANDLER
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Lyndon B. Johnson knew the legislation he
was about to sign was momentous, one that took courage for certain
members of Congress to pass since the vote could cost them their seats.
To honor that, he took the unusual step of leaving the Oval Office and
going to Capitol Hill for the signing ceremony. It was Aug. 6, 1965,
five months after the “Bloody Sunday” attack on civil rights marchers in
Selma, Alabama, gave momentum to the bill that became known as the
Voting Rights Act.
In the six decades since, it became one of the most consequential laws
in the nation's history, preventing discrimination against minorities at
the ballot box and helping to elect thousands of Black and Hispanic
representatives at all levels of government.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court knocked out a major pillar of the
law that had protected against racial discrimination in voting and
representation. It was a decision that came more than a decade after the
court undermined another key tenet of the law and led to restrictive
voting laws in a number of states. Voting and civil rights advocates
were left fearful of what lies ahead for minority communities.
“It means that you have entire communities that can go without having
representation,” said Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the group Black
Voters Matter. "It is literally throwing us back to the Jim Crow era
unapologetically, and that’s not exaggeration.”
Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s
Washington office, said the court’s steady work to erode the Voting
Rights Act, culminating in Wednesday’s decision, amounted to “burying it
without the funeral.”
Hollowing out America's ‘greatest legislative landmark’
The Supreme Court’s ruling came in a congressional redistricting case
out of Louisiana after the state created a district that gave the state
its second Black representative to Congress.
It found that map to be an unconstitutional gerrymander because it took
race into account to draw the lines. In an opinion written by Justice
Samuel Alito, the court's conservative majority said the provision of
the Voting Rights Act in question, called Section 2, was designed to
protect voters from intentional discrimination.
Justice Elena Kagan in her dissent said the bar to show intentional
discrimination is “an almost insurmountable barrier for challenges to
any voting rights issues to prove discrimination.”
Voting rights experts said the ruling leaves the Voting Rights Act only
a shell of what it had been and will provide an open door for political
mapmakers at every level — from local school districts to state
legislatures to Congress — to undermine minority representation.
“We’re witnessing the evisceration of America’s greatest legislative
landmark at the hands of a far right Supreme Court,” Democratic U.S.
Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York said.
Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino, said the decision will
allow more aggressive “cracking and packing” of populations to dilute
their votes, “not just in congressional districts but also in state
legislatures, county commissions, school boards and city councils.”
On Thursday, several civil rights groups held a joint news conference to
condemn the Supreme Court ruling and pledge to fight its impacts.
Marc Morial, National Urban League president and CEO, cautioned against
framing the current moment as merely a battle for political control
between Democrats and Republicans.
“This decision is a continuation of a frontal assault on the gains of
the Civil Rights Movement that began in 1954 with the Brown versus Board
of Education decision,” he said.
VRA was the key tool to fight dilution of voting strength
Voting rights experts said there is no doubting the law's impact over
the decades.
Sherrilyn Ifill, a law professor at Howard University and the former
president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said there were about 1,500
Black elected officials throughout the country in 1970. Today, that
stands at more than 10,000.
"And it isn’t because of the goodness of people’s hearts,” she said.
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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and members of the
Congressional Black Caucus speak to reporters in the wake of the
Supreme Court ruling to strike down a majority Black congressional
district in Louisiana, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday,
April 29, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
She said that success was a direct result of Black communities,
civil rights activists and lawyers having the tools, through the
Voting Rights Act, to file challenges to efforts to diminish the
voting strength of Black and Hispanic voters. Most of the Section 2
cases have been over representation in local governments.
It’s not just the numbers.
A loss of representation, especially in state legislatures and
Congress, will translate into minority communities losing a voice on
issues that matter to them, such as healthcare, education and needed
public works upgrades, said Sophia Lin Lakin, deputy director of the
American Civil Liberties Union's Voting Rights Project.
“States can now point to partisan objectives to justify maps that
strip voters of color of representation, and federal courts will
have little basis to intervene,” she said.
A steady erosion by the court, a future in doubt
The landmark law signed by Johnson 61 years ago had been amended
over the years, but the biggest change was in 2013, when the Supreme
Court released its ruling in Shelby County v. Holder. That decision
essentially ended a provision of the Voting Rights Act mandating the
way states and local jurisdictions were included on a list of those
needing to get advance approval, or preclearance, from the U.S.
Justice Department for voting-related changes.
That decision paved the way for mostly Republican states to pass a
wave of restrictive election legislation, especially after President
Donald Trump, a Republican, falsely claimed widespread fraud cost
him reelection in 2020 against Democrat Joe Biden.
In a surprise ruling in 2023, the Supreme Court upheld Section 2 in
a redistricting case out of Alabama, a ruling that it essentially
reversed on Wednesday.
The question now is what comes next, for minority representatives
and the communities they represent.
In Louisiana, the decision puts Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields on the
endangered list. The state's top elected leaders, all Republicans,
already are planning to postpone the state's May 16 primary so they
can redraw the congressional maps.
This isn’t the first time redistricting has complicated Fields’
political plans. He served for two terms in the 1990s before the
state redrew his congressional district.
“I’ve been down this road before, you know, 33 years ago,” he said.
Shomari Figures, who won the seat created in Alabama after the
court’s 2023 decision, said the decision doesn’t make changes to
that state’s current congressional districts, but it has made
proving future racial discrimination in redistricting cases
significantly tougher.
“It will lead to states, primarily in the South, launching immediate
efforts to redraw districts in ways that will dilute the impact of
Black voters and drastically reduce the number of realistic
opportunities to elect Black members to Congress,” he said.
Shalela Dowdy, an Alabama resident who was a plaintiff in the
lawsuit that resulted in the creation of a new district now
represented by Figures, said she is worried the decision will lead
to the rollback of the district created in 2023, which she said gave
Black voters a greater voice.
“Putting it in the hands of the states on this level is dangerous,”
Dowdy said. “There’s just been a history of the states not doing the
right thing based off their state population.”
___
Chandler reported from Montgomery, Ala. Associated Press writers
Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Joey Cappelletti, Matt Brown and Haya Panjwani
in Washington; and Graham Lee Brewer in Oklahoma City contributed to
this report.
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