politics
April 30, 2026
Voters Can Be Disenfranchised Now
For the conservative editor and columnist James Jackson Kilpatrick, the Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation was an atrocity. Brown v. Board of Education, he wrote in the 1950s, was a “revolutionary act by a judicial junta which simply seized power.” He warned in 1963 that the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would destroy “the whole basis of individual liberty.” And in a 1965 National Review cover story, he argued that in order to “give the Negro the vote,” the Voting Rights Act would repeal the Constitution.
TL;DR
- The Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais effectively weakens the Voting Rights Act by allowing racial gerrymandering under the guise of partisan advantage.
- Justice Samuel Alito argued that partisan advantage, like any other race-neutral aim, is a constitutionally permissible criterion for drawing districts.
- This ruling reverses decades of progress in ensuring minority voting rights and aligns with a philosophy that opposes government interference with the right to discriminate.
- The decision is expected to enable more Republican-controlled states to implement discriminatory maps, leading to fewer nonwhite representatives in Congress.
- The ruling is seen as a perversion of the Voting Rights Act, which was intended to end the deliberate and systematic disenfranchisement of Black people.
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