Ranking Member Raskin’s Statement on the Supreme Court’s Decision in Louisiana v. Callais

Washington, D.C. (April 29, 2026)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, released the following statement after the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, effectively gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965:

 “The Supreme Court has completed its effective demolition of the Voting Rights Act. The VRA was the crown jewel of the 20th-century civil rights movement, born from the blood of marchers and freedom riders and repeatedly reauthorized by bipartisan majorities in Congress. In an act of extraordinary and cynical judicial activism, six Justices have now ravaged Congress’s express purposes, rewriting and effectively neutralizing Section 2 of the VRA by demanding the very standard of proof to bring a VRA claim—a showing of intentional racial discrimination—that Congress explicitly rejected in 1982.

 “The Court has now finished the job that it started by gutting Section 5’s preclearance protections in Shelby County v. Holder. That project is a disgrace to the federal judiciary and a permanent stain on this Court’s legacy. Combined with the Court’s 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause barring federal courts from policing partisan gerrymandering, today’s ruling is a catastrophe for American democracy. Partisan gerrymanders are now untouchable, as are racial vote dilution schemes that shut minority voters out of the political process so long as they are conveniently redesignated as partisan gerrymanders. Republican legislatures across the South are already preparing to carve up and eliminate majority-minority districts at every level of government. The Court has made the world safe for those horrific and racist gerrymanders. This moment is like the end of political Reconstruction in the 19th century.

 “The bottom line under the Roberts Court is that the deliberate inclusion of a majority African-American or Hispanic district to promote fair representation is a presumptively unconstitutional ‘racial gerrymander,’ while the deliberate destruction of a majority African-American or Hispanic district is perfectly legal if its announced purpose is the expansion and entrenchment of a ‘partisan gerrymander.’ This is a huge defeat for American democracy.

 “I call for congressional establishment nationwide of nonpartisan independent redistricting commissions to permanently take map-drawing out of politicians’ hands, and for Congress to authorize multi-member congressional districts with proportional representation systems to prevent partisan shut-outs and drown-outs across the country. Congress must act, right now, to pull the country out of the abyss of constitutional double standards and partisan authoritarianism.”