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The Supreme Court Has Completed Its Quest to Kill the Voting Rights Act

In its 6–3 decision, the court gutted the legislation that ended apartheid in this country—and once again gave white people the ability to suppress Black political power.

Demonstrators outside the US Supreme Court Building during oral arguments for Louisiana v. Callais, Oct. 2025.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act is the most important piece of legislation in United States history. It is the law that freed this country from apartheid. Before the Voting Rights Act—despite the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Reconstruction Amendments and the various civil rights acts passed throughout history—the white majority could systematically disenfranchise Black citizens, as well as other minority groups. White folks could prevent non-white people from voting; they could make it harder for non-white people to vote; or they could simply make their votes not matter. And they could do this by means of violence, poll taxes, gerrymandering, and any other mechanism white people could dream up.

The VRA was the first piece of legislation that seriously tried to change this, to ensure every citizen the ability to participate in democratic self-government. It did this by enforcing the 15th and 19th Amendments and their prohibitions on denying the vote on account of race or gender. Remember, constitutional amendments mean nothing if there is no legislation to support them. Nobody, for instance, went to jail for having a beer in violation of the 18th Amendment’s prohibition on alcohol; instead, people went to jail for violating the Volstead Act (which attempted to enforce the 18th Amendment in the most draconian and stupid way possible). Similarly, every Black person alive in the South between 1865 and 1965 could tell you that nobody got to vote because of the 15th Amendment. Black people got to vote because of the Voting Rights Act.

To be clear, the VRA did not remove white supremacy from politics; it opened a door, and Black political power flooded into the white’s-only space of the US government. In 1964, there were only four Black people in Congress, and zero in the Senate. By 1968, that number had more than doubled to nine. Today, there are 67 Black people and 56 Latinos in Congress, the highest number for both groups in this country’s history.

The story is similar for women. In 1964, there were just 13 women in Congress; today, there are 154. (Always remember that the 19th Amendment did nothing for Black women, who have become the heart and soul of the Democratic Party, until the VRA got their back). And everybody should know that just 43 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, this country elected a Black president. The Voting Rights Act changed the face and the structure of American politics—and government.

Some people have never gotten over it—and six of those people sit on the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts has made it his lifelong crusade to oppose the Voting Rights Act and its democratization of political power. He opposed the expansion of the VRA when he was a young lawyer working in the Ronald Reagan White House, and he has done everything he can while on the Supreme Court to cut out the very heart of Black political power.

On Wednesday, Roberts and his cabal of ruling Republicans finally completed their quest to suppress the strength of the emerging non-white majority in this country. In Louisiana v. Callais, the court ruled, 6–3, that the Voting Rights Act cannot be used to protect minority political power from being diluted through gerrymandering. The ruling effectively ends the VRA, and with it the all too brief era of multiracial democracy in........

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