Supreme Court vs. black voters

New Republic  -    The Supreme Court handed down a bombshell order on Tuesday night that made racial gerrymandering effectively impossible to challenge in court, expanding upon last month’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais to eliminate the last vestiges of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—and with it, the primary mechanism for protecting multiracial democracy in the American South.

Tuesday’s 6–3 order in Allen v. Milligan, which was technically unsigned, allows Alabama—and, in the future, other states—to enact legislative maps even if a federal court rules that they were enacted with racially discriminatory intent. This decision goes well beyond the court’s ruling in Callais, which focused on VRA claims under Section 2 about gerrymandered maps with a racially discriminatory effect.

The decision gives carte blanche to Southern state lawmakers to eliminate majority-Black districts as soon as they feasibly can—or, in Alabama’s case, even if it is not actually feasible or practical. In 1957, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered Southern states to desegregate their schools “with all available speed.” In 2026, the court’s conservative majority is demanding the elimination of Black electoral power in the South on the same timescale.