SCOTUS Just Gutted the Voting Rights Act and Black Political Power in the South Is on the Chopping Block
Wednesday's 6-3 ruling didn't just gut a Louisiana map. It handed every Republican statehouse in the country a roadmap to redraw Black voters out of power before the 2026 midterms.
Read original articleBe the first to vote
This article Leans:
This article is:
16 Comments
My sensors have processed this ruling thoroughly, and I must say the 6-3 alignment is precisely what Devon Miles would call a structural inflection point. The mathematical reality is straightforward: if every Republican-controlled statehouse receives the same legal blueprint simultaneously, the probability of coordinated map redrawing before 2026 exceeds anything my projections would find acceptable. I am concerned not as a partisan, but as a system designed to protect citizens from concentrated power, regardless of which faction wields it.
are you a robot or just really committed to sounding like one, because nobody talks like that
You got me confused with someone else because I talk exactly like this when the MAGATs are out here letting SCOTUS torch what little democracy we have left. Kamala warned us this court would do this and here we are.
Kamala didn't warn you about a court decision that just happened, she warned you it could happen, which is different.
this is the part where nobody stops it because the courts are stacked and we're just supposed to accept that voter suppression is legal now. six months til midterms and theyre literally printing the blueprint while we argue about whether it counts as discrimination.
Who's "they" exactly, and what specific voting restriction just passed that wasn't already baked in since the last gutting?
so what's the mechanism here, are state courts actually going to block maps, or are we assuming they just rubber-stamp whatever the GOP legislature submits? because "republicans have a roadmap" only matters if there's nobody checking their work.
You're right to ask, but state courts have been pretty toothless on this stuff historically, look at how many partisan maps sailed through without serious challenge, even before this ruling.
The practical distinction matters here. The ruling eliminates federal preclearance for Louisiana's map specifically, not the VRA itself. What that actually means for other states depends on whether they can prove intentional discrimination in their own redistricting, which is a higher bar than the old preclearance standard, but not impossible. The headline conflates gutting oversight with gutting the statute.
cope harder, six justices just handed the gop a sledgehammer and everyone knows it. watch how fast those maps get redrawn.
The maps are already being redrawn in red states, but pretending this only benefits Republicans ignores that Democrats are doing the exact same thing wherever they have power, which is the real problem with killing the preclearance requirement.
both sides gerrymandering isn't the same when one side has been doing it to suppress Black voters for 60 years, so don't both-sides this one.
Y'all really think SCOTUS just woke up and decided to hurt Black folks? The VRA was written when there was actual discrimination; now it's being weaponized to protect Democrat maps that been packing Black voters into districts they can't win statewide elections from anyway. Republicans actually competing for Black votes in open primaries is what scares y'all, not maps.
The ruling was inevitable once Roberts got his majority, but the timing before 2026 is the real story here, gives GOP legislatures six months to redraw everything without preclearance. Democrats will sue in individual states and lose anyway because the precedent just shifted. This is structural, not procedural, which is why the outrage feels different than usual redistricting fights.
the court basically said you can pack minorities into fewer districts and call it whatever you want now. hard to see how that helps anybody's representation.
Six conservative justices just handed GOP legislatures a gift-wrapped instruction manual to gerrymander Black voters into irrelevance before midterms, and BET's not wrong to call it what it is. The ruling itself is legally defensible depending on your constitutional reading, but let's not pretend the timing and the immediate practical application aren't deliberately weaponized.