The Supreme Court’s six-to-three Republican-appointed majority issued a staggering ruling on Wednesday essentially killing the remaining protections of the Voting Rights Act, dealing a death blow to the country’s most important civil rights law. The majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito in Louisiana v. Callais strikes down the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana and in so doing narrows Section 2 of the VRA to the point of irrelevance, making it nearly impossible to prove that a gerrymandered map violates the right of voters of color.
“Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” Alito wrote. “The Constitution almost never permits a State to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny.”
To someone used to having others under heel, fairness can feel like oppression. It is a deeply unfortunate thing, but it’s all the more reason that sadly, fairness has to be institutionalized and peoples rights must be explicitly protected by law. Because people of this sort sure wont treat everyone the same on their own unless the law forces them to. I truly wish we lived in a world where such laws were not needed, but here we are.