Supreme Court vote gutting Voting Rights Act visualized

 

Headline:  Democracy Docket,  4/29/2026

Jim Saksa reports:

In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court kneecapped the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the landmark civil rights law that restricted racial gerrymandering and racial discrimination in voting for sixty years. 

Writing for the majority in Callais v. Louisiana, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the court was not striking down Section 2 of the VRA, but rather “properly” interpreting it as “impos[ing] liability only when circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred. 

Justice Elena Kagan, in dissent, accused the majority of making changes that “eviscerate the law.”