{"id":7591,"date":"2026-05-09T09:11:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T09:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=7591"},"modified":"2026-07-02T09:22:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T09:22:06","slug":"after-supreme-court-guts-voting-rights-act-southern-organizers-fight-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=7591","title":{"rendered":"After Supreme Court Guts Voting Rights Act, Southern Organizers Fight Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/span>Selen Ozturk<\/a><\/p>\n

Since the Supreme Court\u2019s landmark ruling in\u00a0Louisiana v. Callais<\/em>, activists across the South believe the Black vote is being erased.<\/p>\n

The April 29, 2026\u00a0ruling<\/a>\u00a0struck down Louisiana\u2019s congressional map containing two majority-Black districts, effectively gutting Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) which prohibits voting procedures that dilute minority representation.<\/p>\n

Already since the ruling, state legislatures across the South have called emergency redistricting sessions.<\/p>\n

Florida\u2019s legislature\u00a0passed<\/a>\u00a0a map drafted by Governor Ron DeSantis within hours of the decision, potentially creating a 24-4 Republican advantage in the state\u2019s delegation; Louisiana\u2019s governor\u00a0passed<\/a>\u00a0an executive order April 30 suspending a congressional primary election already underway so lawmakers could pass a new congressional map; the Tennessee House\u00a0approved<\/a>\u00a0a redrawn map May 7 eliminating a majority-Black district around Memphis after a special redistricting session; Mississippi\u2019s governor\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0for a special congressional redistricting session to begin May 20; and the Alabama House\u00a0voted<\/a>\u00a0May 6 to approve a new map amid an active election.<\/p>\n

Voting rights advocates and community organizers on a May 4\u00a0Alabama Values<\/a>\u00a0briefing argued the decision was the latest move in a decades-long pattern of dismantling Black voting power.<\/p>\n

\u2018They couldn\u2019t wait\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cLike clockwork \u2026 they couldn\u2019t wait,\u201d said Rhyane Wagner, policy and narrative director at Alabama Values, of state legislatures\u2019 redistricting sessions. \u201cIt reminds me of the\u00a0Dobbs<\/em>\u00a0decision overturning\u00a0Roe<\/em>, where you had states in the South with \u2018trigger bans\u2019\u201d \u2014 laws quickly enacted across 13 states, designed to totally or near-totally ban abortion.<\/p>\n

Wagner called the sessions \u201ca coordinated effort by the super-majority legislatures to deeply entrench their power. Dare I say it \u2014 white-minority rule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over 26%<\/a>\u00a0of Alabama is Black. The new map passed by the legislature would eliminate one of the state\u2019s two Black-majority, currently Democratic districts.<\/p>\n

This map was originally drafted by Republican lawmakers in 2023, but\u00a0blocked<\/a>\u00a0by federal courts for diluting Black voting power.<\/p>\n

While the state is under a federal court order not to change its current remedial map until 2030, Alabama lawmakers are now asking the Supreme Court to lift this block, arguing that the federal landscape has changed since the\u00a0Callais<\/em>\u00a0ruling gutted the Section 2 precedent which had restricted racial gerrymandering and discrimination.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court \u201chas all but said that Section 2 is nullified,\u201d said Mitchell Brown, voting rights senior counsel at the\u00a0Southern Coalition for Social Justice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Under the new standard, he explained, plaintiffs can no longer argue that a redistricting map gives Black voters less opportunity to elect candidates of their choice; instead, they must prove that a legislature intentionally discriminated \u2014 a far greater burden, and one made harder still because the court\u2019s majority suggested that if a legislature can point to partisan motivation for a map, including race-based justification, that effectively shields against a Section 2 claim.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe basically have to have what is known as \u2018smoking gun\u2019 racial discrimination evidence,\u201d said Brown.<\/p>\n

Noting the court\u2019s observation that \u201ctimes have changed, that racism of the past is not the same as racism today \u2026 we\u2019ve made great strides,\u201d he said \u201cthe reason why we\u2019ve made great strides is statutes like the Voting Rights Act \u2026 and now the court has taken that away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The historical through-line is a pattern of \u201cwhite retrenchment,\u201d he explained: After Reconstruction, Black political power was dismantled through Jim Crow-era violence. After the Civil Rights Movement produced the VRA, the legal gains held for decades, but after President Barack Obama\u2019s election in 2008, the chipping began again, with Section 5 of the VRA\u00a0struck down<\/a>\u00a0in 2013 and Section 2 effectively nullified now.<\/p>\n

\u2018Back to Jim Crow\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

For Beverly Cooper, co-founder of\u00a0Stand Up Mobile<\/a>\u00a0in Alabama, the ruling arrived amid the voter registration work her all-volunteer team does daily.<\/p>\n

Describing recent talks with community members ahead of the state\u2019s May 19 primary election, she said \u201cI\u2019ve just started being very honest with them and suggesting that we\u2019re at a point where we\u2019re back to Jim Crow \u2026 Last night, I had a couple of conversations with some youth groups, and they\u2019re so upset and concerned that they\u2019re ready to go to the polls right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Louisiana v. Callais<\/em>, formerly named\u00a0Callais v. Landry<\/em>, was the culmination of a different 2022 lawsuit,\u00a0Robinson v. Landry<\/em><\/a>, where Black voters and civil rights groups argued that the state\u2019s new congressional map violated Section 2 by not having a second majority-Black district.<\/p>\n

Following Supreme Court orders, the legislature passed a map adding a second majority-Black district, but a group of non-Black plaintiffs countersued in\u00a0Callais v. Landry<\/em>\u00a0and won in the April 2026 ruling, having argued that the map was a racial gerrymander not mandated by the VRA.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe brought the original case with the intent to restore and to create fair and just maps in Louisiana, just to have\u00a0Callais<\/em>\u00a0make this case about further disenfranchising Black and other minority voters,\u201d said Ashley Shelton, president and CEO of the\u00a0Power Coalition for Equity and Justice<\/a>\u00a0in Louisiana.<\/p>\n

One-third<\/a>\u00a0of Louisiana is Black.<\/p>\n

With the governor having attempted to suspend the House race mid-election after the Supreme Court deemed the state\u2019s map unconstitutional, Shelton was unwavering: \u201cWe are telling voters here in the state of Louisiana to vote your complete ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Shelton pushed back on the idea that the ruling\u2019s harm is racially limited.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter Reconstruction is when we got public schools, because of Black people,\u201d she said. \u201cThe Voting Rights Act did not just provide voting rights for African Americans. It provided voting rights for all minorities\u201d and opened a door, she argued, that disability rights, LGBTQ rights and women\u2019s rights protections eventually entered.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t just about Black people,\u201d Shelton added. \u201cThis is about anyone that has found themselves on the other side of an agenda that does not include them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kathy Sykes, executive director of the\u00a0Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance<\/a>, framed the immigrant community in the same lineage.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore the Voting Rights Act, we had to count on our allies to stand in the gap for us, and the immigrant community \u2014 they\u2019re in that space right now,\u201d she said. \u201cThis administration is denaturalizing folks who are legally present \u2026 Our votes really do matter. If they did not matter, they wouldn\u2019t work so hard to prevent and dilute them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speakers agreed that this is not the end for the voting rights fight.<\/p>\n

Wagner pointed to state-level voting rights acts as a path that can exceed the current federal version \u2014 allowing proportional demographic representation, banning partisan gerrymandering and restoring \u201cpreclearance,\u201d a process in Section 5 of the VRA that, before 2013, required states and jurisdictions with an \u201cextensive history of racially discriminatory voting practices<\/a>\u201d to submit any proposed changes in their voting laws or maps to the federal government.<\/p>\n

Brown described one effective strategy in Edgecombe County, North Carolina where over 200 community members, by organizing around existing neighborhoods, geographic dividing lines and economic ties without invoking race,\u00a0successfully<\/a>\u00a0produced six majority-Black school board districts and one majority-white district \u2014and drew overtly racist opposition from two white board incumbents that ultimately cost them their seats.<\/p>\n

\u201cA hit dog always hollered,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy liberation was never coming from the courts,\u201d Shelton added. \u201cYou\u2019re never going to get anything that you don\u2019t fight for.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter what they do at the legislative and the House level, they can\u2019t change where we live,\u201d she said. \u201cNo matter what they try to draw \u2026 we can elect a Congress that can restore so much of what has been lost this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: Published without changes from American Community Media<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BySelen Ozturk Since the Supreme Court\u2019s landmark ruling in\u00a0Louisiana v. Callais, activists across the South believe the Black<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7592,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[232,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-regular-column"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t