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The Justices Acted as Partisans in the Voting Rights Ruling (NYT gift article)
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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/opinion/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-2026.html?unlocked_article_code=1.e1A.hGwp.onY8CUBHo5P-&smid=tw-share
The Supreme Court’s decision on Wednesday on the Voting Rights Act is a mind-boggling piece of judicial overreach. Six conservative justices voted to weaken the act, in that way substituting their own judgment for that of Congress, which reauthorized the law 20 years ago with overwhelming bipartisan support, including a unanimous vote in the Senate. With this ruling, the court has acted more like partisan legislators than like impartial judges....
The reality is that in the name of disentangling race from politics, the Supreme Court has given white voters more power at the expense of racial minorities.
We recognize that people of different races now vote more similarly than they once did. That is promising. But racially polarized voting remains common in much of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, where Black voters lean heavily Democratic and white voters heavily Republican. Because the Supreme Court has previously allowed partisan gerrymandering, those states will be free to draw districts that elect candidates whom only a small percentage of Black voters support. Those politicians are also likely to be white.
It is impossible not to notice the partisan nature of the ruling. The six justices in the majority are the six nominated by Republican presidents, and they have most likely made it easier for the party that chose them to hold power in Congress. Wednesday’s decision may shift nine seats in Southern states from Democratic to Republican hands, some in the 2026 cycle and more in years to come. State legislatures and local bodies will surely tilt in the same direction......
Wednesday’s result is not what Congress intended. When Congress amended the Voting Rights Act in 1982, it rejected requiring plaintiffs to prove intentional discrimination. The amended law instead required plaintiffs to prove that the political process, including redistricting, was “not equally open to participation” by a minority group in the sense that “its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” A 1986 Supreme Court ruling fleshed out the standard. If Black voters were sufficiently numerous and compact, and if they also supported one party far more than white voters did, then the protections of the Voting Rights Act kicked in. That test was reasonable, and Wednesday’s ruling has effectively replaced it.
So much about the ruling is upside down. In 2019, in a different case, Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court recognized an obvious truth: Partisan gerrymandering is a problem for American democracy. But the majority then said that federal courts could not find a map unconstitutional because it was drawn for partisan reasons. As a result, restrictions on racial gerrymandering remained one of the biggest constraints on unfair redistricting, at least until Wednesday.
The reality is that in the name of disentangling race from politics, the Supreme Court has given white voters more power at the expense of racial minorities.
We recognize that people of different races now vote more similarly than they once did. That is promising. But racially polarized voting remains common in much of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, where Black voters lean heavily Democratic and white voters heavily Republican. Because the Supreme Court has previously allowed partisan gerrymandering, those states will be free to draw districts that elect candidates whom only a small percentage of Black voters support. Those politicians are also likely to be white.
It is impossible not to notice the partisan nature of the ruling. The six justices in the majority are the six nominated by Republican presidents, and they have most likely made it easier for the party that chose them to hold power in Congress. Wednesday’s decision may shift nine seats in Southern states from Democratic to Republican hands, some in the 2026 cycle and more in years to come. State legislatures and local bodies will surely tilt in the same direction......
Wednesday’s result is not what Congress intended. When Congress amended the Voting Rights Act in 1982, it rejected requiring plaintiffs to prove intentional discrimination. The amended law instead required plaintiffs to prove that the political process, including redistricting, was “not equally open to participation” by a minority group in the sense that “its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” A 1986 Supreme Court ruling fleshed out the standard. If Black voters were sufficiently numerous and compact, and if they also supported one party far more than white voters did, then the protections of the Voting Rights Act kicked in. That test was reasonable, and Wednesday’s ruling has effectively replaced it.
So much about the ruling is upside down. In 2019, in a different case, Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court recognized an obvious truth: Partisan gerrymandering is a problem for American democracy. But the majority then said that federal courts could not find a map unconstitutional because it was drawn for partisan reasons. As a result, restrictions on racial gerrymandering remained one of the biggest constraints on unfair redistricting, at least until Wednesday.