The assault on voting rights reaching its endgame

Chief Justice John Roberts is 69 years old. He has spent almost four decades working toward a single goal: the systematic legal dismantling of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He is very close now. The Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais could come anytime now. When it does, a lot of people are going to act surprised. Don't be one of them.

They've been planning this since Reagan

This didn't start with Callais. It didn't start with Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee in 2021. Then, the Court quietly strangled what remained of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act's practical reach. It didn't even start with Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. That's when Roberts finally got to the work he'd been auditioning for since he was a 27-year-old lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, where he argued that the Voting Rights Act was probably unconstitutional anyway.

This has been a decades-long project. Now it's time for the final act.

Here's what Callais is actually about, stripped of the legal jargon. Louisiana is one-third Black. For years, the state drew congressional maps that gave Black voters a meaningful shot at electing a candidate of their choice in exactly one of six districts. Yes, one-sixth is smaller than one-third. A federal court said that was illegal under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana drew a second majority-Black district to comply. That should have been the end of it.

But a group of white voters sued, arguing that drawing a district with Black voters in mind—even to remedy documented discrimination—is itself unconstitutional racial discrimination. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and, in a move that should have set off every alarm in the country, asked the parties to brief whether Section 2 is constitutional at all. Louisiana, smelling blood, abandoned its own map and told the Court: go ahead, kill the whole thing. The whole thing being the Voting Rights Act.

So now the only people in that courtroom defending the Voting Rights Act are the Black voters and civil rights organizations who have been fighting this same damn fight for over sixty years.

Normally, the state is supposed to defend the law it was forced to comply with. But, it took one look at this Court and decided to join the opposition. Who would have seen this coming? Everyone with eyes.

This isn't really about maps

What happens if Section 2 falls? Beyond Congress and the headlines about House seats, think about your city council. Your school board. Your county commission. Section 2 is the legal tool that has forced hundreds of local governments across this country to stop holding at-large elections specifically designed to dilute Black and Brown voting power and create districts where those communities can actually elect someone who gives a damn about them.

That will go away. All of it. In states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, unified Republican legislatures have been sharpening their pencils and waiting for this ruling. They could have new maps drawn up within weeks. One Louisiana state legislator put it plainly: the best case is they go back to a 5-1 map. The worst case is 6-0. Six congressional districts. Zero where Black voters have a real voice. That's not a hypothetical. They openly say so.

And here's the infuriating rub: this Court is going to use the language of colorblindness to do it. They're going to invoke the Equal Protection Clause—written to protect Black Americans from the terrorism of Reconstruction-era white supremacy—and argue that using it to ensure Black Americans can elect their representatives is the real discrimination. With straight fucking faces. Roberts has been rehearsing this argument since the 80s.

We've been here before. Last fall, when Richard Hasen told Dahlia Lithwick that it could be "an earthquake in American politics," we also laid out exactly how we got here—the Roberts project, the death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy, what's actually at stake for multiracial democracy. And we went deep on the case itself when the October re-argument made clear the Court wasn't backing down.

Those pieces hold up. They are even truer today. But, now I'd add, as we sit on the edge of the catastrophe, the surprise is not that they're doing it. The surprise is that anyone thought the project would stop. And that so few seem to give a damn.

Killing democracy by a thousand cuts

Shelby County killed the requirement that states with histories of voter suppression get federal approval before changing their voting laws. Roberts said it was unnecessary, that the country had moved on, that the coverage formula was outdated. Look around. Racism hasn't magically disappeared. Now it's ok to say the quiet parts out loud and parade around disappearing people.

Within hours of that ruling, states began passing voter suppression laws they'd had sitting in a drawer. Hours. They were ready. Because they knew what the ruling meant even if some of the commentators were still trying to find the bright side.

Brnovich made it nearly impossible to prove a Section 2 violation even when discriminatory intent was obvious. The Court invented a balancing test out of thin air that basically said: yes, this burdens minority voters more, but have you considered that states have interests?

And now Callais is positioned to finish it. No preclearance. No meaningful Section 2. The Voting Rights Act becomes a museum piece, something we can put in a display case next to the poll tax and the grandfather clause and explain to future schoolchildren—in states that still teach history without the stain of the "lost cause"—that we used to have this.

Goodbye equality in representation

The decision is coming. Before the ruling and the inevitable "both sides need to find common ground on this" columns start appearing remember this: this is what the systematic dismantling of democracy looks like.

Not all at once. Case by case. Out in the open. On the shadow docket. Decade by decade. Decision by decision. Then, one morning you wake up and actual democracy is gone and someone in a red tie and a flag pin on their lapel tells you the Constitution requires it.

John Roberts has been waiting forty years for this. He's almost there. It's the last chance to hold power for whites in a rapidly diversifying country. Gone will be the concept of one person, one vote. Instead, it looks like a return of the three-fifths compromise: One white person equals 1+ vote.

May it bite them in the ass.

Non in cautus futuri.

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