The Supreme Court may soon diminish Black political power, undoing generations of gains |
Back in 2013, the Supreme Court tossed out a key provision of the Voting Rights Act regarding federal oversight of elections. It appears poised to abolish another pillar of the law.
In a case known as Louisiana v. Callais, the court appears ready to rule against Louisiana and its Black voters. In doing so, the court may well abolish Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a provision that prohibits any discriminatory voting practice or election rule that results in less opportunity for political clout for minority groups.
The dismantling of Section 2 would open the floodgates for widespread vote dilution by allowing primarily Southern state legislatures to redraw political districts, weakening the voting power of racial minorities.
The case was brought by a group of Louisiana citizens who declared that the federal mandate under Section 2 to draw a second majority-Black district violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and thus served as an unconstitutional act of racial gerrymandering.
There would be considerable historical irony if the court decides to use the 14th Amendment to provide the legal cover for reversing a generation of Black political progress in the South. Initially designed to enshrine federal civil rights protections for freed people facing a battery of discriminatory “Black Codes” in the postbellum South, the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause has been the foundation of the nation’s modern rights-based legal order, ensuring that all U.S. citizens are treated fairly and preventing the government from engaging in explicit discrimination.
The cornerstone of the nation’s “second founding,” the Reconstruction-era amendments to the Constitution, including the 14th Amendment, created the first cohort of Black elected officials.
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