This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais about the last remaining section of the Voting Rights Act, a civil-rights law designed to ensure that states could not get in the way of nonwhite citizens voting. The law was put in place to reverse Jim Crow–era policies that kept Black people out of southern politics. Over the decades, it expanded to protect Spanish speakers, Native Americans, disabled people, and minority voters all over the country.
The decision will likely hinge on Chief Justice John Roberts, who has been dubious about the Voting Rights Act for years. Based on the oral arguments, most court watchers concluded that the majority of justices were “skeptical” of the already weakened law. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson gave the act its most elaborate and convincing defense, which soon might be transcribed and remembered as its obituary.
Our two guests this week—Stacey Abrams, a voting-rights activist and former candidate for Georgia governor, and the Atlantic staff writer Vann Newkirk—both have families who grew up in the South before the Voting Rights Act. Newkirk recalls that his great-grandmother could not vote until she was a grandmother, so a world without the Voting Rights Act is one he can easily imagine. But as Newkirk also points out, Americans without those family stories might not realize what they are about to lose. Most starkly, defanging the Voting Rights Act could encourage states to redraw districts in a way that shuts out minority voters with impunity.
Estimates show that the ruling could hand the House to Republicans, as Democrats could lose six to 19 seats, which Abrams warns could ensure “one-party rule” going forward. Will we easily slip out of this era we’ve come to take for granted, in which American democracy is at least theoretically accessible to all?
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/10/if-voting-rights-act-falls/684572/
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