If you haven’t already heard, on Wednesday, April 29th, the U.S. Supreme Court made a devastating decision that has practically decimated Section 2 of the Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, eliminating vital protections for voters within minority communities.
What is Section 2 of the VRA?
Section 2 of the VRA “prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups identified in Section 4(f)(2) of the Act.” (U.S. Department of Justice)
→ Essentially, Section 2 of the VRA was a critical piece of the legislation that protected minorities from voting-related discrimination and voter suppression by prohibiting such practices.
What was the decision?
LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS:
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the case was originally about racial gerrymandering, examining “whether state lawmakers had allowed race to unconstitutionally predominate when redrawing the state’s congressional map to remedy Voting Rights Act violations found by a federal district court.” In simpler terms, the initial case was brought forward to determine if Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District Map was constitutional or if it qualified as racial gerrymandering.
While the Supreme Court simply could have said that the map was unconstitutional and needed to be redrawn, they instead decided that the case needed to be reargued. This meant the case became about whether or not Section 2 of the VRA is constitutional, rather than racial gerrymandering strictly in Louisiana.
As a result, SCOTUS ruled that discriminatory outcomes are not to be considered unconstitutional unless intent can be proven, arguably allowing for more racial discrimination and racial gerrymandering to occur across the country. Read more about this here. For a more in-depth overview of this decision, I recommend listening to the latest episode of the podcast Strict Scrutiny.
What does this mean for Rhode Island?
Because RI will soon only have one Congressional seat, this ruling doesn’t directly impact us in the way it will impact bigger states. That said, there’s something else regarding this situation that we ALL need to pay attention to: The fact that the Supreme Court was never even asked to hear this case to begin with. In other words, SCOTUS sought out a case they could use to dismantle voting rights. This means they could do the same with other court cases to attack all sorts of rights.
Where do we go from here?
This decision has made it clearer than ever that voting rights are 100%, undeniably, under attack in this country. We MUST secure the Rhode Island Voting Rights Act to ensure that Rhode Islanders are protected. Furthermore, the RI VRA must be as thorough as possible and must include every single protection we can think of. Now is the time to tell your representatives and senators to support the RI VRA and all of its proposed amendments. A template to contact your rep and senator will be provided below.
We cannot let this devastating news defeat us. Instead, we have to act, and there is quite literally no time like the present.
