The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is among the most successful laws in US history. And it is one of the most morally righteous things the United States of America has ever done.

The law was America’s first serious attempt since Reconstruction to build a multiracial democracy, and it succeeded beyond even the most radical post-Civil War Republicans’ dreams. On the day President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, Black voter registration rates in the Jim Crow haven of Mississippi were just 6.7 percent. Two years after the VRA became law, that rate was 60 percent.

So the Voting Rights Act, which the Republican justices are expected to take another bite out of during the Supreme Court’s new term, was a triumph. But it also rests on assumptions about how power is distributed in the United States that may no longer be true. The sad reality is that we may no longer be able to trust either the executive or the judicial branch with the powers given to them by the Voting Rights Act.

The central problem that the VRA targeted was illiberal states, ruled by white supremacists determined to cut Black Americans out of political power. In the mid-1960s, the federal government were the good guys on racial equality, led by its greatest champion to occupy the White House since President Ulysses S. Grant. In addition to the Voting Rights Act, Johnson signed laws banning race discrimination in employment, schools, hotels, restaurants, theaters, and housing.

So it made sense that his signature voting rights law centralizes power in the federal government. One key provision, which the Republican justices effectively repealed in 2013, required states with a history of race discrimination in elections to “preclear” any new election laws with federal officials in Washington, DC. Another, which is now before the Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais, allows federal judges to intervene when a state enacts a law that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any US citizen to vote on account of race or color.”

The central premise of the VRA, in other words, was that federal officials in both the executive and judicial branches could be trusted to pursue the goal of racial equality in elections — without regard to which political party would benefit if this goal became a reality.

It is tough to argue that this premise still holds today. The Trump administration gleefully wields power to punish Trump’s perceived enemies, and to selectively advantage Republicans. And the Republicans who control the federal judiciary are increasingly no different. How else can one explain Trump’s extraordinary winning streak in the Supreme Court?

Thus far, the Court’s Republicans have only sought to dismantle the Voting Rights Act. Chief Justice John Roberts, in particular, crusaded against the law for nearly half a century. As a young Reagan administration lawyer, he was a central player in a failed effort to convince Ronald Reagan to veto a 1982 law strengthening the VRA’s protections against race discrimination.

If Roberts and his fellow Republican justices strike down the VRA, their party is likely to benefit. The Callais case targets the Voting Rights Act’s restrictions on racial gerrymandering. Moreover, while racial gerrymandering is a separate legal concept from partisan gerrymandering (which occurs when the majority party draws maps to reduce representation by the minority party) the two concepts are intertwined. This is especially true in states with large numbers of Black voters. Because Black Americans overwhelmingly prefer Democratic candidates to Republicans, Republicans can often use race as a proxy to determine which voters they want to disempower.

Thus, in the likely event that the VRA’s restrictions on racial gerrymandering fall, it will be easier for red states — especially in the South — to eliminate districts that elect Democrats of color and replace them with districts that elect white Republicans. In the South in particular, many red state congressional delegations could become entirely white, as the Republican state legislature draws new maps that deny representation to (predominantly Black)........

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