Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling makes it harder to protect minority voting power and alters the landscape of future elections

In a major ruling that would permit weakening the voting power of minorities in the United States, the Supreme Court on April 29, 2026, struck down a Black-majority district in Louisiana’s congressional map as “an unconstitutional gerrymander” and altered the court’s interpretation of the Voting Rights Act. In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority argued that Louisiana had violated the law by drawing a second Black-majority district. Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the court was upholding a key part of the Voting Rights Act known as Section 2, which prohibits “voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups identified” in the act. But the conservative justices also devised a new interpretation for its application based on historical developments. By doing that, the court majority made it more difficult for plaintiffs to challenge redistricting plans under the act. In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan called the decision the “latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.” Kagan, joined by the other two liberal justices, argued that the decision will make it effectively impossible to use race in redistricting – as has been done…

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