The Supreme Court Just Made Its Voting Rights Ruling Even Worse |
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The Supreme Court Just Made Its Voting Rights Ruling Even Worse
The court has fast-tracked its decision demolishing the VRA, helping Southern states redraw their maps before the midterms.
Supporters of voting rights hold signs outside the US Supreme Court on October 15, 2025.
People say that the wheels of justice turn slowly, but the Supreme Court’s Republican supermajority has shown time and again that it can act with great alacrity when it wants to crush the civil and political rights of Black citizens. When the court wants to participate in some racism, it can move like Sonic the damn Hedgehog.
The Supreme Court accelerated to ramming speed yesterday when it decided to forgo its normal procedures and fast-track its April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which effectively demolished the Voting Rights Act. Normally, the court waits 32 days after issuing an opinion before finalizing its ruling by submitting it to the lower courts. This waiting period exists so that losing litigants can ask the court to reconsider its ruling—and, in theory at least, the court will do just that.
But in Louisiana v. Callais, the winning litigants—the white people who argued that the Voting Rights Act took away their whites-only constitutional right to be overrepresented in Congress—asked the court to do away with this waiting period and finalize the decision immediately. The reason has to do with the fast-approaching midterm elections—and the primaries for those midterms, which are due to start this month. If the litigants want to get new racist maps in place before the election, time is of the essence.
To help jump-start the process of eliminating Black political power, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry has called off the state’s congressional primaries and is trying to speedily redraw Louisiana’s map so that it consists only of white districts. But he can’t legally push forward a new map until the Supreme Court’s decision to get rid of the old one is final. (It’s worth noting that this is happening all over the South. Confederate state after Confederate state is trying to redraw its maps to erase Black voting districts as quickly as possible.)
The fast-tracking request is ironic, because if there ever were a time for the Supreme Court to reconsider one of its opinions, it would surely be when white folks interpret that opinion as a license to reinstitute Jim Crow. When you issue a ruling that immediately makes white people try to eliminate the Congressional Black Caucus, it may be worth taking a month to consider if this is really where you want the country to go.
But instead of actually using the waiting period as was intended, the Republican........