Voting Rights Act
1965 landmark US law barring discriminatory voting; Section 2 gutted by SCOTUS Callais ruling, May 2026.
The Voting Rights Act's Section 2 duty to draw majority-Black districts was curtailed, not eliminated, when the Supreme Court's 29 April 2026 Louisiana v. Callais ruling struck down Louisiana's second such district; states have since redrawn maps ahead of November.
Last refreshed: 26 July 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
With Section 2 gutted, what federal protection remains for minority voters in redistricting?
Timeline for Voting Rights Act
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US Midterms 2026Background
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 bars discriminatory voting practices; Section 2 prohibits any voting rule that denies or abridges the right to vote on account of race. The Supreme Court narrowed the Act's reach twice before 2026: Shelby County v. Holder (2013) ended the preclearance regime that had forced covered states to seek federal approval before changing voting laws, and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021) narrowed vote-denial claims.
On 29 April 2026 the Court curtailed Section 2 further, without abolishing it. Ruling 6-3 in Louisiana v. Callais, with Alito writing, it struck down Louisiana's second majority-Black congressional district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, holding that its intentional creation under the VRA itself violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The decision overturned the 1986 Thornburg v. Gingles doctrine that had anchored four decades of redistricting remedies, but it did not hold that Section 2 can never require a race-conscious district; it narrowed the circumstances in which one survives constitutional scrutiny.
The Act's remaining operative protection for minority voters now runs mainly through state-level provisions, such as Florida's Fair Districts constitutional amendment, that operate independently of federal law.
States redraw maps after curtailment
The ruling's 5 May 2026 judgment forthwith skipped the usual 32-day remand wait, so Louisiana's Section 2 duty stopped applying before any redrawn map faced a court test. Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Mississippi all moved to redraw within days, treating the ruling as broader licence rather than a finding confined to Louisiana's own district.
That reading is still being tested rather than settled: a federal panel let Tennessee's Memphis-splitting map stand on 23 July only because the state argued the map served party advantage, not race, a defence Rucho v. Common Cause allows but Section 2 itself does not resolve.