Supreme Court's Right-Wing Clique Guts the Voting Rights Act -- After Five Decades of Protecting Minorities, Suddenly, It's 'Unconstitutional'

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The most obvious impact of the decision will be to question ongoing legal fights in states like Texas, where the GOP-dominated Legislature has sought to redraw district lines to lessen the likelihood of electing Latinos. In other states that were not covered by the Voting Rights Act, such as Pennsylvania, civil rights lawyers have had to go to court semi-annually in an effort to hold the line against regressive partisan voting rules. 

The historic context for these state-by-state political fights is that the Republican Party knows that its largely white base is in a losing battle against America's changing demographics, where minority populations are growing and threatening longtime governing elites. Thus, the party has been waging a multi-front battle to limit the political rights of people from communities of color and to discourage participation by young voters as well. Even the most recent immigration reforms before Congress would bar Latinos on the path to citizenship from voting for more than a decade, for example. 

Now, following the Supreme Court’s ruling today, civil rights groups will be forced to fight state-by-state and jurisdiction-by-jurisidiction, instead relying on the Department of Justice to come in and stop wholesale changes in laws designed to disenfranchise voters.  

"The Supreme Court has effectively gutted one of the nation's most important and effective civil rights laws," said Jon Greenbaum, Chief Counsel, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades. Today's decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation.”