Liberal Supreme Court justices say majority has ‘completed demolition’ of Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court’s liberal justices called their colleagues’ decision clawing back race-based redistricting on Wednesday a “now-completed demolition” of the Voting Rights Act.

In a 48-page dissent, Justice Elena Kagan held up the landmark 1965 law as helpful to the nation’s progress on racial discrimination.

“At this last stage, the Court’s gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in peril,” Kagan wrote.

“I dissent because Congress elected otherwise,” she continued. “I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity. I dissent.”

She read her dissent aloud from the bench, a rare move the justices reserve for when they want to express their strong disagreements in a case.

Kagan’s opinion was joined by her two fellow liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

It came as the Supreme Court declared Louisiana’s addition of a second majority-Black congressional district an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The 6-3 decision along ideological lines stands to claw back advocacy groups’ ability to force new districts over claims that minority voting power is being diluted.

As Justice Samuel Alito cast the conservative majority’s decision as merely an “update” to the Voting Rights Act framework that would ensure judges don’t stretch the law too far, Kagan said he was understating the impact. “Even antiseptic,” she wrote.

Kagan accused her colleagues of being set on destroying the Voting Rights Act for more than a decade.

“It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers,” Kagan wrote of the law. “It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress.”

“Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court,” Kagan continued. “I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

Though the ruling most immediately impacts Louisiana, it stands to impact the future of redistricting fights where majority representation has been boosted to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

The decision not only impacts congressional districts but any kind of election maps drawn in the country — including those drawn for state, municipal and local bodies like state supreme courts, public service commissions and city councils, among others.

That means the ruling will likely impact a redistricting war that has erupted during the second Trump administration and has already seen states such as Texas and California redraw their maps to give Republicans and Democrats in those states, respectively, an advantage.

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