The Supreme Court dealt another blow to the Voting Rights Act today, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg called for people not to be “demoralized” but to instead “mobilize” to change the system.

In a 6-3 decision – with all six of the conservative justices in the majority – the Supreme Court ruled against section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which bans racial discrimination in voting. The law has been used to justify congressional district maps that ensure people of color hold a majority in some districts and send people of color to Congress to represent them.

Related

Republicans are pushing hard for a bill that would disenfranchise trans voters

The Supreme Court case was about Louisiana’s Sixth Congressional District, which is majority Black.

“Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority. “Compliance with section 2 thus could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting here. The state’s attempt to satisfy the Middle District’s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

Alito wrote that political parties can re-draw voting districts to favor their party, but the new districts can’t be legally overturned on racial grounds unless the plaintiffs are able to prove that the maps were drawn with racist intent.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing the dissent, said that the decision “renders section 2 all but a dead letter.”

“The decision here is about Louisiana’s District 6,” she wrote. “But so too it is about Louisiana’s district 2. And so too it is about the many other districts, particularly in the south, that in the last half-century have given minority citizens, and particularly African Americans, a meaningful political voice. After today, those districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long.”

The law was constitutional for over 60 years, based on the 15th Amendment’s grant of power to Congress to “enforce” racial equality in voting rights.

HRC’s president, Kelley Robinson, who is Black, denounced the decision.

“Today’s Supreme Court ruling allows extremists to continue undercutting critical, hard-fought protections like the Voting Rights Act and threatens the fundamental promise at the heart of our democracy: that every voter deserves an equal voice in electing their government,” she said in a statement. “Any attempt to silence the vote of even one American hurts all 300 million of us.”

“Of course, none of this is new. Thankfully, neither is the fight to shape a more perfect union. For generations, communities have navigated attempts to silence their electoral power, and civil rights leaders have never stopped pushing our country closer to its ideals.”

Buttigieg struck a similar note on social media.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision reverses hard-won progress under the Voting Rights Act,” Buttigieg wrote in reaction on social media. “It means less representation for millions of Black Americans and other voters of color, as lawmakers gain greater ability to manipulate their districts.”

He said that the ruling will lead to more gerrymandering, but that now is the time to “mobilize around reform, new laws, and where necessary, constitutional amendments for fairer government.”

Journalism professor Ida Bae Wells said that this decision will likely decrease the number of Black people serving in Congress.

“The Voting Rights Act is essentially dead and it’s quite possible that we will, like when a similar SCOTUS gutted civil rights at the fall of Reconstruction, see a disappearance of much of the Black congressional representation, especially in the most heavily Black states, which are in the South,” she wrote.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.