by Elwood Watson

I still feel outraged and psychologically spent over the Supreme Court’s decision to dismantle the last vestiges of the Voting Rights Act.

A 6–3 decision last week struck down a Louisiana congressional map that had resulted in a new Black-voter majority district. The majority opinion, written by right-wing Justice Samuel Alito, unconvincingly argued they were saving the landmark legislation by nullifying it, and that political maps —like the ones that currently have 23 Black House members from former Confederate states — are supposedly racist because they discriminate against white people.

The decision grants permission for Republican states seeking to eliminate districts where voters of color form the majority. Some Southern politics have already moved to try and use the ruling to increase Republican representation during the upcoming midterms.

It’s not an overstatement to argue the outcome of such draconian legislation will probably result in the greatest deficit of voting power from Black Americans since the end of Reconstruction and the establishment of Jim Crow. It will be difficult to pinpoint how many seats Democrats will be deprived of in the Republican redistricting smorgasbord the court’s decision has granted. The New York Times reported the ruling would jeopardize about a dozen Democratic-leaning seats throughout the South.

Many on the right are lauding this decision as a victory for a “colorblind” constitution. The truth is ignoring and denying racial discrimination does not nullify it. For the past 61 years, the Voting Right Act has provided civil rights advocates and the federal government vital ingredients necessary to outlaw racial discrimination in voting. The current Supreme Court treats the law’s very success as the reason why it is no longer necessary. This is a shortsighted and arguably disingenuous position to take.

Alito’s opinion repeals the 1982 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, arguing the mere discriminatory impact of preserving the competitive representation of racial minorities was reason enough to render voting maps illegal, with no evidence of discriminatory intent required. Discarding congressional intent entirely, Alito claimed the provision was unconstitutional due to the fact that to ensure duplicative representation for Black voters, redistricting bodies had to consider race. This, the court contended, constitutes discrimination against non-Black voters.

Such an argument reeks of intellectual dishonesty. Racism remains a potently vile and adversarial factor in the lives of many people of color. To pretend otherwise is engaging in willful ignorance and denial.

It took the Voting Rights Act to make the dreams of the Reconstruction amendments to the U.S. Constitution real. That horrific chapter also belongs to the Supreme Court of the 1870s. In a series of cases, the court greenlit decades of Klan and White League terror acts across the South and Southwest.

The court’s steady erosion of the Reconstruction amendments — together with its evisceration of congressional efforts such as the Enforcement and Civil Rights Acts — smothered the civil rights movement in the former slave South. The high court also permitted state constitutions to effectively wipe out Black voting rights, launched decades of Jim Crow suppression of the vote, and nullified any hope of civic or socioeconomic equality. The upshot of all this regressive and cruel lawmaking from the bench was to erect a regime of injustice and inhumanity nearly as repugnant as slavery itself.

The majority of this right-wing court sinisterly aligns with them in infamy. Both courts, in the last third of the 19th century and our current one, have refused to acknowledge institutional and systematic racism are perennial factors that continue to exist, and they’ve opted to terminate updated federal safeguards of the vote under the guise of a supposedly color-blind society that has never existed. Justices on both courts viewed protecting the right to vote as a racial entitlement that gave undue preference to Black citizens.

The conservative right has shrewdly but perversely played the long game. Republicans took cognizance of the success the left had garnered during the 1960s, such as its monumental victories with the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965), culminating with the ratification of Roe v. Wade in the early 1970s. Conservative activists then realized they could employ similar strategies in their efforts to abolish such progress.

This decision will dramatically reduce racial diversity in Congress, most state legislatures in the South, and local jurisdictions, such as city councils. Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito have demonstrated tenacious opposition to the belief the U.S. is a diverse and pluralistic democratic society. They have also showcased a blatant desire to arrogantly discard Congress’s perspective that judicious participation for minority voters occasionally requires race-conscious remedies be implemented.

Such an unjust verdict provides many right-wing jurisdictions with the tragic ability to further engineer racially partisan gerrymandering. We are currently in politically dark days in America.

Copyright 2026 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.