By Legal Editor Saori Shiroseki with Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling
On Wednesday the six bent Republican Supreme Court Justices completed their decades-long repeal of the Voting Rights Act on the unrebuttable ground that they didn't like it.
That may seem rather a harsh conclusion, but you don't have to take our word for it. Here's the conclusion of the three unbent women who dissented with remarkable bitterness:
The point is not to deliver a eulogy for the law—though, in truth, the Court’s step-by-step slaying of voting rights now makes one appropriate. Rather, the object is to reveal how far today’s decision repudiates past, and rightfully still controlling, congressional choices.
Callais v. Louisiana, No. 24-109 (April 29, 2026)(dissenting op. at 6).
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| Alito and Roberts seemed pleased by their decision |
Very briefly, the six bent Republicans decided that a state violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by breaking up minority districts (thereby effectively nullifying the minority (in America, Black) vote) only when plaintiffs prove that the redistricting was done for racism.
Crucially, the same bent six decided that when minority voters favored one party and majority white voters favored another, a state could dilute the votes of minority voters for political reasons.
That is, it's OK to dilute Black votes to enshrine Republican rule as long as the state's mapmakers did not say, “Oh, and by the way, we're racists too.”
In other words, never. In fact, it's worse than that. Under the Court's existing case law, a Section 2 claimant had to plead and prove that the political affiliations of the majority and minority voters of a state diverged. Callais, dissenting op. at 18. But now the existence of political differences is both a necessary part of, and fatal to, the claim.
The political fallout was swift: unraveling the Voting Rights Act-inspired maps of the old Confederacy would wipe out as many as 12 majority-minority (and Democratic) districts. This return to the Jim Crow era when Black candidates were systematically excluded from public office is a grievous blow to democracy.
While the media focused on the effects this unraveling would have on the question of who controls the House, that isn't the most terrible aspect of the bent majority decision. It is possible that a decision based on faithful application of the law could hurt people, sometimes badly.
But this decision came nowhere the law. The Callais majority once acted not as a court, but as an unelected Privy Council with the power to dismiss any laws enacted by the political branches that displeased them.
To her credit, Justice Kagan makes this clear to even the most meager intelligence, like our mainstream media bloviators:
The majority now demands that vote-dilution plaintiffs muster proof of racially discriminatory motive. ...In that way, the decision echoes an earlier one of this Court, which also held that Section 2 should function as an intent test....But Congress...amended Section 2 to reject that view: In light of the way voting discrimination had operated since the Fifteenth Amendment’s adoption, Congress instead drafted Section 2 to bar the use of any electoral mechanism that would result in minority citizens having less opportunity than non-minority citizens to choose their political representatives.
Id. at 6.
As Justice Kagan explains in extenso, Congress passed Section 2 to protect minority voters from decisions that in effect made their vote meaningless, by spreading them among white-majority districts. The Supreme Court then interpreted that provision to require racist intent.
Then Congress rewrote the law to make it clear that the Supreme Court got it wrong, and that the issue was discriminatory effects. There the law stood for 43 years, blessed by many Court decisions.
On Wednesday, despite 43 years of contrary precedent, the six bent Republicans again rejected Congress's duly enacted legislation on the basis of their feelings that things had improved so much the law enacted by Congress was no longer needed:
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| As long as it's political, it's fine! |
So the majority moves on again, now to a grab-bag of “developments” that it somehow thinks license it to rewrite a statute....The majority first summons the slogan of Shelby County, in which the Court ordained itself the arbiter of when civil rights laws are no longer needed. “ ‘[T]hings have changed dramatically,’ ” today’s majority echoes, pointing to increases in African American voting registration and to the success of “ ‘African-Americans attain[ing] political office’ ”—“particularly in the South, where many §2 suits arise.” ... No doubt that is so, in large measure because of the Voting Rights Act. But it is a separate question whether those gains will endure once the Act’s protections are gone. ...And surely—but apparently not—the proper actor to answer that question is Congress. For one thing, it likely has a fuller understanding of the issue. I will be interested to see, for example, whether time will vindicate the majority’s view that the “great strides” made in African American office-holding, “particularly in the South,” will hold up after the issuance of this opinion...My own guess is not. ...But honestly, the American people pay no Member of this Court to make those predictive policy judgments—and more important, the Constitution does not allow us to base our decisions on them. It is for the people’s representatives in Congress to decide when the Nation need no longer worry about the dilution of minority voting strength. So long as Congress has not done so—and it has not—this Court has no right to cancel (sorry, “update”) a duly enacted statute on the theory that it knows better.
Id. at 42-43.
The bent Republican majority has taken it upon itself to rewrite, based on its own, to put it charitably, limited perspective on the current state of race relations in America. As Justice Kagan pointed out, this was the method used by that majority to repeal the other operative provisions of the Voting Rights Act: Section 5 preclearance, voided for no legal reason by Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U. S. 529 (2013) and Section 2 prohibitions on changes to voting rules that unfairly burden minority participation, Brnovich v. DNC, 594 U. S. 647 (2021).
And that Voting Rights Act hat trick is not the only recent example of lawless Supreme Court decisions that just happen to favor Republicans. We'll just mention one: United States v. Trump, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), creating, contrary to the Constitution, an absolute Presidential immunity for crimes committed while in office.
By the way, Kagan's prediction that Southern white Republican racists would lost no time in destroying Black majority districts was well founded. Since Wednesday's decision, white politicians in South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida, and Missouri have all started (or finished) action to blow up majority-minority districts, thereby putting 12 Black Congressmen at risk.
The media response has been the predictable hand-wringing not combined with calls to take effective action on a political level to curb this out-of-control court.
The only cure for a nonjudicial power-mad institution that believes itself empowered to repeal federal statutes based on whatever prejudices they have firmly held for their entire lives is a political one.
During the Biden Administration, calls for Court reform were condescendingly rejected by the Democratic powers that be as too extreme.
That seems to have changed.
No less an Establishment pillar than House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has called for unspecified reforms, saying “All options are on the table.” Presumably this excludes bombing their bridges and power plants.
The deep thinkers at the Brennan Center have come up with six reforms (including term limits), all of which are fine as far they go, which isn't far enough.
We have a few more modest suggestions; modest, that is, in relation to the gravity of the current bent Court's usurpation of political power:
7. Unpack the Court (and various circuits) with at least four new Justices. The counterargument that a future Republican regime would add their own only emphasizes the the Court is subject to political control, and eventually the arms race would force the Republicans into a real compromise involving staggered 18-year terms. Doing nothing simply lets the Republicans' court-packing go unanswered. If you don't believe me, ask Justice Garland.
8. Limit the Court's jurisdiction. A revised Voting Rights Act could provide that its operation cannot be enjoined or stayed except upon a final unanimous judgment of the Court. Similar provisions could be added to curb shadow docket abuse.
9. Impeach Justices who lied during their confirmations (Thomas, Kavanaugh) or have proven to be be corrupt (Thomas, Alito).
Oh, and one final proposal that should effectively curb the Republican Justices' appetite for judicial tyranny.
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| Release them and replace with the Supreme Court |
If they are not going to act like judges, then they don't need a courthouse. They don't own their marble palace on Capitol Hill; we do. And we can boot them out, restoring the status quo that prevailed for over 150 years.
Actually, we agree that they should have a safe place to work far from the prying eyes of the great unwashed.
Fortunately, ICE has spent over $1 billion on warehouses it intended to turn into concentration camps for persons not convicted of any crime. The public outcry has brought this mighty project to a halt.
Why not put these warehouses to good use? The Court and its flunkies could easily fit into one of these 800,000 square foot behemoths, with room for their basketball court. We can't wait to see the first arguments in their beautiful and utterly secure facility in ICE's unused warehouse in Williamsport, Maryland, conveniently located only an hour away from Chevy Chase.
Perfect.
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