[music] >> The Voting Rights Act is not just a victory for black Americans. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., it enriches the lives of all Americans. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a very big deal. It transformed America, marking the end of the Jim Crow era and effectively banning racial discrimination in elections.
When Lyndon Johnson came into office, she made black civil rights a priority. It is to give all our people the right to choose their leaders. To deny this right, I think [music] is to deny democracy itself. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, I mean, they talked about it as, you know, being this crown jewel, [music] right? Like that they had finally righted a wrong.
>> The stunning thing about the Voting Rights Act is just how fast it worked. Um, so, on the day it was signed, less than 7% of black eligible voters in the state of Mississippi were registered to vote. Just 2 years later, that number was 60%. >> the past few decades, conservative justices on the Supreme Court have taken major steps towards [music] dismantling it. Supreme Court just finished hearing arguments in a major Republican challenge to the Voting Rights Act.
This is a case that could gut key provisions that prohibit racial discrimination in redistricting. He’s talking about the Louisiana versus Callais case. At first glance, it might look like yet another scuffle over who gets their way when it comes to drawing electoral maps. But the truth is, there is a lot at stake here, and you should care about it. Because if the plaintiffs in this case get their way, the Voting Rights Act could be erased, and America could be transformed again.
But this [music] time, it would tear down more than half a century of voting rights progress. The Supreme Court is now set to decide not just if Louisiana must keep two majority black districts, but whether the Voting Rights Act can [music] continue protecting minority representation nationwide. So, slap on your I voted stickers and get your notebooks out. Because this video is going to take a trip through history to explain how a shifting Supreme Court got us here, and how this case in Louisiana could upend voting rights and political representation for a generation. This is The Docket, a Patreon exclusive Vox series unpacking the Supreme Court cases that you need to know about.
Let’s go back in time to 1965. The world got Beatlemania, The Sound of Music was released, and it’s also the year when the Voting Rights Act was passed. It was the culmination of years of effort and sacrifice by the Civil Rights Movement. The VRA has been amended several times, but there are two key pillars to know: Section [music] 2 and Section 5. Section 2 bans denying the right to vote on account of race, and was also amended to include the right to elect representatives of their choice.
Section 5 said that certain jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination had to get permission from the federal government if they wanted to change their voting laws. The aim was to prevent the states and jurisdictions on this map, mostly the South, from passing laws that would discriminate against black voters. We’re going to look at three major cases since then that are key to understanding Louisiana versus Callais. First stop, 1986. A case called Thornburg versus Gingles built upon Section 2 and established rules governing when an alleged racial gerrymander violates the VRA.
The two most important factors under Gingles, one is whether a state has residential segregation. So, you know, white people tend to live in one part of the state, black people tend to live in another part of the state. And also, whether it has racially [music] polarized voting. So, voters of one race tend to vote for the Republican Party, voters of the other race tend to vote for the Democratic Party. [music] And the reason why the Supreme Court homed in on those two factors is that when you have voters clustering together, and you also have racial polarization, that tends to produce two separate political communities, where it’s a very easy for whichever racial group is in the majority to essentially cut the other group out of power by just drawing maps where they don’t have any representation.
And so, you need to draw additional black districts, additional Latino districts, you know, additional districts to make sure that that minority group also has representation. As a result of Gingles, the number of black representatives shot up thanks to the creation of more majority black districts. The second case, which came in 2013, was not so favorable to the Voting Rights Act. One of the key pillars of protection, Section 5, was struck down in a case called Shelby County versus Holder in a 5-4 decision. The result was that states and jurisdictions that used to have racist voting laws passed a number of new voting restrictions that disproportionately affected minority voters.
We saw a flood after the Shelby decision, a flood of laws designed to make it hard just to show up at the polls. The premise of the Shelby County majority opinion is, “Well, we don’t have all this racism anymore that we used to have in 1965, so we don’t need the law that stopped the racism that we used to have in 1965.” That left Section 2 as the remaining safeguard to protect the voice of minority voters. Fast forward to 2023, another gerrymandering case, Allen versus Milligan, is heard by the Roberts Court, now made up of six Republican-appointed and three Democrat-appointed justices. With the Voting Rights Act on the line once again, the ruling in Milligan upheld essential parts of Section 2 and struck down a racially gerrymandered map in Alabama.
Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh voted with the court’s liberal minority. Because this court, or at least its Republican majority, is so hostile >> [music] >> to the Voting Rights Act, I think everyone thought they were going to, you know, strike down the anti-gerrymandering provisions, overrule Gingles, you know, you know, you know, allow Alabama to have whatever maps Alabama [music] wanted. And everyone, including me, was shocked when that didn’t happen. I wanted to take a second to thank our Patreon members. We’re putting this episode of our Patreon exclusive series, The Docket, on YouTube.
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And if you’re not able to support financially right now, you can still follow us on Patreon for free to stay connected to our community and our reporting. Now, back to the video. Now, in Louisiana versus Callais, the U.S. Supreme Court appears willing to strike down Section 2, despite the striking similarities to Milligan.
This case has been kicking around for a few years before it made it to the Supreme Court. So, let me catch you up. In 2022, Louisiana state legislators drew an electoral map called HB1 that only included one majority black district out of six statewide, despite the 2020 census showing that 1/3 of the Louisiana population was black. Civil rights groups and community members sued, and it was decided that they needed a new map with two majority black districts to reflect the state’s population. The new map, SB8, passed in the state legislature in 2024, and it seemed like it was over.
But a group of non-African American voters claimed SB8 was unconstitutional because race was the sole reason for the map. They argued because the map was created to fix discrimination against black voters, it was discriminating against white voters. This is Louisiana versus Callais. >> And the Callais case wound up being heard by two Trump judges. And those Trump judges said that the maps that Louisiana drew were themselves unconstitutional.
After an initial oral argument in March 2025, the Supreme Court heard rearguments 7 months later. We will hear argument first this morning in case 24-109, Louisiana versus Callais. These arguments were framed around a single question, whether the state’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the 14th or 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
[music] This court’s cases >> [clears throat] >> in a variety of contexts have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, [music] sometimes for a long period of time, decades, uh, >> [music] >> in some cases, but that they should not be, uh, indefinite and should, uh, have a end point. >> [music] >> If it’s going above and beyond what the 15th Amendment requires, um, of its own force, but Congress has [music] actually chosen the Voting Rights Act as a remedy, does that affect the question of whether it [music] can go on indefinitely or not? >> And the two takeaways from the the argument in Callais, um, one is that the Republican justices are absolutely determined to eliminate the Voting Rights Act racial gerrymandering safeguards. [music] The other thing is that they have no idea how to do it. They couldn’t agree on a rationale for why it’s, uh, they should do it.
They sort of started with the outcome they wanted, and then they were tossing out different theories they could use to get to that outcome. [music] I I find it particularly cruel, um, to use two amendments that were created [music] to protect black and other communities of color and women, right? After reconstruction, [music] to use those two amendments to then take away voice and rights from [music] the very people it were they were created to protect. In many ways, the Voting Rights Act has already been gutted and no longer carries the same protections it once had. This case could be its last gasp.
>> Now, our governor, our attorney general, and our legislature, who are all Republicanly controlled, [music] are saying that it was a mistake. It was a mistake to create a fair map. It was a mistake to give voice to an opportunity for black voters to be able to to elect the candidate of choice, >> [music] >> to have true representation. >> You know, I’ve always seen the Voting Rights Act as like a sacred text. This is the law that [music] finally made the United States into a liberal democracy where everyone had an equal, at least every citizen, had an [music] equal say in who would govern them.
But, the law only works if you can trust the federal government to, you know, to want to implement this law. If the court decides to strike down Section 2, it would be ruling that any use of race in districting, even if it was meant to remedy racial discrimination in the first place, is illegal. In the likely event that the Supreme Court overrules Jingle Belles and eliminates the Voting Rights Act protections against racial gerrymandering, the immediate effects could be pretty catastrophic both for black representation and for Democrats. >> Some reports suggest that as many as 19 House seats could be flipped Republican with redrawn district maps, and it’s not just the House of Representatives. This is bigger [music] than just one congressional seat in the state of Louisiana.
We could see a sweeping change that would set us [music] back 60 years. What happens next with the Voting Rights Act won’t be clear until the Supreme Court makes a ruling on the case, which should arrive just in time to set the stage for the 2026 midterm elections. It might very well usher in a renewed fight over voting rights in America in the 21st century. [music] It cannot be minimized, um, the fact that people died for [music] black voters to have voice and opportunity and representation. I think you absolutely will see, you know, black voters mobilizing across this country.
There’s going to be a reckoning.
