Voting rights protections in the United States are facing a new legal hurdle after the Supreme Court narrowly limited a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in a closely watched decision.
It came as the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act — which raises the bar for racial minorities to challenge electoral maps as racially discriminatory under the landmark civil rights law — in a victory for the Louisiana Republican and President Donald Trump’s administration.
The justices, in a 6-3 decision driven by the court’s conservative members, upheld a lower court’s decision to block the electoral map that had given the state a second black-majority congressional district.
The lower court had found that the map was overly guided by racial considerations, violating the constitutional promise of equal protection under the law.
The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. The decision was written by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by five of his fellow conservative justices. Three liberal justices dissented.
The Louisiana case involved a central element of the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 of the law was enacted by Congress to prohibit electoral maps that would result in minority voter disenfranchisement even without direct evidence of racist intent.
Alito wrote that the focus of Section 2 should now be on enforcing the Constitution’s prohibition on intentional racial discrimination under the 15th Amendment.
Alito wrote, “Only when construed in this way does Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act fit appropriately within Congress’s Fifteenth Amendment enforcement power.”
Alito said, “Outlawing a map simply because it fails to provide a sufficient number of majority-minority districts would create a right that the Amendment does not protect.”
Legal analysts said before the ruling was released that the decision gutting Section 2 could benefit Republican candidates.
The decision was issued amid an ongoing battle in Republican-governed and Democratic-led states across the country over redrawing electoral maps to change the composition of congressional districts for partisan advantage ahead of the November congressional elections.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark American law designed to prevent racial discrimination in voting. It specifically targets practices that may prevent minority voters from participating equally in elections.
Justice Elena Kagan dissented with two other liberal justices, saying the decision would have major consequences.
“Under the Court’s new approach to Section 2, a state can, without legal consequence, systematically weaken the voting power of minority citizens.”
Kagan said, “Of course, the majority does not announce today’s holding that way. Its opinion is understated, even antiseptic.”
Kagan said, “The majority merely claims to ‘update’ our Section 2 law, such as through a few technical changes.”
The Trump administration also supported the challenge to the Voting Rights Act in the Louisiana case, advocating raising the bar for proving a Section 2 violation.
Louisiana, where black people make up about a third of the population, has six U.S. House of Representatives districts — with black voters supporting Democratic candidates.
In a process called redistricting, the boundaries of legislative districts across the United States are reconfigured to reflect population changes measured by the national census conducted every 10 years.
Notably, this redistricting is typically done by state legislatures once per decade.
