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As of October 2025, the Supreme Court is poised to issue rulings in two cases that could fundamentally reshape American democracy. At stake is the future of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation in the nation’s history.
The Court’s decisions in Louisiana v. Callais and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe will determine how—and even if—the law’s remaining protections against racial discrimination in voting can be enforced for generations to come.
The Foundation of Federal Voting Protections
To understand the cases before the Supreme Court today, you must first understand the century-long struggle that made the Voting Rights Act necessary. The law was not a beginning, but a corrective measure designed to fulfill a constitutional promise that had been broken for nearly 100 years.
The Broken Constitutional Promise
In the aftermath of the Civil War, the United States ratified three transformative amendments to the Constitution. The 14th Amendment (1868) guaranteed all persons “equal protection of the laws,” and the 15th Amendment (1870) was even more explicit, declaring that the right of citizens to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
These amendments were intended to secure the full rights of citizenship, including suffrage, for newly freed Black Americans.
This promise was systematically dismantled following the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Across the South, states implemented a web of discriminatory Jim Crow-era laws—including poll taxes, literacy tests, property requirements, and grandfather clauses—all designed to circumvent the 15th Amendment and disenfranchise Black voters.
These legal barriers were enforced through violence and intimidation, leading to the near-total exclusion of Black Americans from the political process for decades. The Constitution’s guarantees became, as one lawyer would later argue before the Supreme Court, a “mere parchment promise.”
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
The VRA was born directly from the moral and political crucible of the Civil Rights Movement. The televised images of state troopers brutally attacking peaceful marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in March 1965, shocked the nation’s conscience. The event galvanized public opinion and provided President Lyndon B. Johnson with the political capital to push a powerful new voting rights bill through a bipartisan Congress.
Celebrated as a “crowning legislative achievement,” the VRA was designed to finally give teeth to the 14th and 15th Amendments. Its impact was immediate and profound.
By banning discriminatory practices and providing for federal oversight, the law dramatically expanded the electorate, reshaped political bodies at every level of government, and helped usher in what some historians call a “Second Reconstruction.”
The Two Original Pillars of the VRA
The original VRA was built on two primary enforcement mechanisms—a proactive shield and a reactive sword—which worked together to protect minority voters. Understanding the distinction between these two pillars is critical to grasping why the current legal battles are so consequential.
Section 5: The Proactive Shield
Section 5 was the VRA’s most innovative and powerful tool. It was a proactive measure that applied to certain “covered jurisdictions”—states and localities with a documented history of voting discrimination.
Before any of these jurisdictions could implement any change to their voting laws or procedures, no matter how small, they had to obtain advance approval, or “preclearance,” from the federal government (either the Department of Justice or a federal court in Washington, D.C.).
This provision shifted the burden of proof: instead of voters having to prove a law was discriminatory after the fact, the government had to prove beforehand that the change was not discriminatory in purpose or effect.
For nearly 50 years, Section 5 blocked over 1,000 discriminatory voting changes before they could harm a single voter.
Section 2: The Nationwide Ban
Unlike the geographically targeted Section 5, Section 2 has always applied nationwide. It is a permanent, general prohibition against any voting qualification, standard, practice, or procedure that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
Section 2 functions as a reactive tool. It does not prevent discriminatory laws from being passed, but it gives voters a “private right of action”—the ability to file a lawsuit in federal court to challenge a law after it has been enacted.
| Provision | Core Function | Geographic Scope | Burden of Proof | Current Legal Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section 5 | Proactive “preclearance” to block discriminatory voting changes before implementation. | Applied only to “covered jurisdictions” with a history of discrimination. | The jurisdiction had to prove a proposed change was not discriminatory. | Effectively inoperable since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder. |
| Section 2 | Reactive litigation to challenge discriminatory voting laws after they are enacted. | Applies nationwide to all states and localities. | Plaintiffs (voters) must prove a law has a discriminatory result. | Under direct constitutional challenge in Louisiana v. Callais and procedural challenge in Turtle Mountain v. Howe. |
The Shifting Legal Landscape
The power and scope of the Voting Rights Act have been shaped not only by Congress but by decades of interpretation from the Supreme Court. A series of landmark cases first defined how the VRA’s protections work, then began to dismantle them, setting the stage for the high-stakes legal battles of today.
Thornburg v. Gingles (1986): Defining “Vote Dilution”
In 1982, Congress amended Section 2 to clarify that a voting law could be found illegal if it had a discriminatory effect, even if there was no proof of discriminatory intent. This created the “results test.”
Four years later, in Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court provided the critical legal framework for how this test should be applied in cases of “vote dilution.”
Vote dilution is a specific type of harm where the voting strength of a minority group is diminished by the design of an electoral system. This often occurs through racial gerrymandering, where district lines are drawn to either “crack” a cohesive minority community by splitting it among several majority-white districts, or “pack” minority voters into a single, super-majority district, thus wasting their votes and limiting their influence in surrounding districts.
In Gingles, the Court established a three-part test, known as the Gingles preconditions, that plaintiffs must satisfy to bring a successful vote dilution claim:
Numerosity and Compactness: The minority group must be “sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district.” In other words, it must be possible to draw a reasonable district where the minority group would be in the majority.
Political Cohesion: The minority group must be “politically cohesive,” meaning its members tend to vote for the same candidates.
Majority Bloc Voting: The white majority must vote “sufficiently as a bloc to enable it…usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” This demonstrates that voting is racially polarized.
If plaintiffs can prove these three things, the court then moves to a broader analysis of the “totality of the circumstances” to determine if the political process is not “equally open” to all voters.
For nearly four decades, this framework has been the centerpiece of vote dilution litigation.
Shelby County v. Holder (2013): The Fall of Preclearance
The Supreme Court’s modern assault on the VRA began with its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court did not strike down Section 5 (preclearance) itself. Instead, it invalidated Section 4(b), the formula used to determine which states and localities were subject to federal oversight.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the coverage formula, which was based on data from the 1960s and 1970s, was unconstitutional because it did not reflect the significant progress made in minority voting rights over the subsequent decades.
The practical effect of this ruling was to render Section 5 completely inoperable, as there was no longer a constitutional mechanism for determining where it applied. Congress was invited to create a new formula based on current conditions, but it has never done so.
In a now-famous dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned that “throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
The effects were immediate. Within hours of the decision, Texas announced it would implement a strict voter ID law that had previously been blocked by preclearance. North Carolina soon followed with what a federal court later called a law that targeted African Americans “with almost surgical precision.”
The ruling opened the floodgates for restrictive voting laws, including polling place closures and aggressive voter roll purges, particularly in formerly covered jurisdictions. With the VRA’s proactive shield gone, Section 2 became the primary, and much more burdensome, tool left to challenge these laws.
Allen v. Milligan (2023): A Surprising Reaffirmation
By 2023, many legal observers believed the Supreme Court’s conservative majority was poised to deliver a final blow to the VRA. The case Allen v. Milligan concerned Alabama’s congressional map, under which Black residents, who constitute over a quarter of the state’s population, had a realistic opportunity to elect their preferred candidate in only one of seven districts.
The state of Alabama asked the Court to fundamentally reinterpret Section 2 in a way that would have made it nearly impossible to win vote dilution claims.
In a stunning 5-4 decision, the Court rejected Alabama’s arguments. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the Court’s three liberal justices to affirm the lower court’s finding that Alabama’s map likely violated Section 2.
The majority opinion explicitly upheld the decades-old Gingles framework, reaffirming that Section 2 can require the creation of an additional majority-minority district to remedy unlawful vote dilution. The ruling was a historic and wholly unexpected victory for voting rights advocates, preserving—for the moment—the last major pillar of the VRA.
This sequence of cases, however, set the VRA on a collision course with another powerful legal doctrine. The Gingles framework is explicitly race-conscious; it requires courts to analyze voting patterns along racial lines to determine if a remedy is needed.
This stands in tension with a more recent, competing interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which a majority of the Court has used to advance a “colorblind” view of the Constitution, most notably in its 2023 decision striking down affirmative action in higher education.
While the dissents in Milligan argued that Section 2 should not require states to consider race at all, the majority opinion did not fully resolve this tension. It merely postponed the conflict. That conflict has now arrived in Louisiana v. Callais, which asks the Court to decide whether the VRA’s race-conscious remedy for vote dilution is itself an unconstitutional form of racial discrimination.
| Case | Core Legal Question | The Court’s Holding | Lasting Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) | How should courts evaluate claims of vote dilution under the amended Section 2? | Established the three-part Gingles test (numerosity/compactness, cohesion, bloc voting) as the necessary preconditions for a claim. | Became the foundational legal framework for all vote dilution litigation for nearly 40 years. |
| Shelby County v. Holder (2013) | Is the Section 4(b) formula for determining which jurisdictions are covered by Section 5 constitutional? | Struck down the Section 4(b) coverage formula as unconstitutional because it was based on outdated data. | Ended federal preclearance, shifting the burden of proof to voters and making Section 2 the primary tool for fighting discrimination. |
| Allen v. Milligan (2023) | Did Alabama’s congressional map violate Section 2 by providing only one majority-Black district? | Affirmed the traditional Gingles test and found that Alabama’s map likely violated Section 2, requiring a second majority-Black district. | Temporarily preserved Section 2’s power in redistricting but set up a direct constitutional conflict over race-conscious remedies. |
The Current Battleground
The 2025-26 term features two cases that present the most significant threats to the Voting Rights Act in a generation. One case, Louisiana v. Callais, challenges the very substance of what the law protects. The other, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe, challenges the procedural mechanism of how the law is enforced.
Together, they form a coordinated legal assault that could neutralize the VRA’s remaining power.
Louisiana v. Callais
The litigation in Louisiana v. Callais is a complex story of a remedy becoming its own legal controversy. It began as a straightforward Section 2 case. Black voters, who make up about one-third of Louisiana’s population, sued the state over its 2022 congressional map, which contained only one majority-Black district out of six. A federal court agreed that this map likely diluted Black voting strength in violation of the VRA.
In response, the state legislature in 2024 drew a new map creating a second majority-Black district. The new district was oddly shaped, stretching across the state to connect Black populations in Shreveport and Baton Rouge, a configuration designed not only to comply with the court order but also to protect powerful Republican incumbents like House Speaker Mike Johnson.
At this point, a different group of plaintiffs—a group of self-described “non-African American” voters—filed a new lawsuit. They argued that the remedial map was itself an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because race was the predominant factor in its creation.
The Argument Against the Map
The central claim of the challengers is that creating a district where race is the primary consideration violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, even if the goal is to remedy past discrimination.
Louisiana’s Solicitor General, now arguing against the very map the state created, told the justices that “race-based redistricting is fundamentally contradictory to our Constitution.”
This legal theory frames the VRA’s requirements as being in direct tension with the Constitution, an argument that draws strength from the Supreme Court’s recent “colorblind” jurisprudence in other areas, such as its 2023 ruling that ended affirmative action in college admissions.
The Argument For the Map
Defenders of the map, including the original Black plaintiffs who intervened in the case, argue that considering race is not only permissible but necessary to remedy a proven violation of federal law.
They contend that the challengers are simply rehashing the same arguments that the Court rejected just two years ago in Allen v. Milligan. To overturn such a recent and significant precedent, they argue, would violate the principle of stare decisis (respect for prior decisions) and damage the Court’s institutional legitimacy.
Civil rights groups have characterized the challengers’ argument as a “bizarro take” on the 14th Amendment—using a constitutional provision enacted to protect Black citizens from discrimination as a weapon to dismantle the very laws that provide that protection.
Inside the October 15th Oral Arguments
During oral arguments on October 15, 2025, the Court’s conservative justices signaled deep skepticism about the continued use of race-based remedies under the VRA.
Justice Kavanaugh, a key vote in Milligan, repeatedly questioned when race-based remedies should have an “end point,” suggesting they were never meant to be indefinite.
Chief Justice Roberts, who authored the Milligan opinion, offered a subtle but potentially significant remark that seemed to open the door to reconsidering that precedent. He suggested that Milligan “took the existing precedent as a given and considered Alabama’s application of its approach,” implying that the Court had not yet re-examined the fundamental constitutionality of the precedent itself.
The Court’s liberal justices pushed back forcefully. Justice Sonia Sotomayor asserted that the challengers’ position would effectively “get rid of Section 2,” while Justice Elena Kagan warned that such a result would be “pretty catastrophic” for minority representation.
Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe
While Callais attacks the substance of the VRA, the Turtle Mountain case presents a different, but equally lethal, threat to its enforcement. The central legal question is a procedural one: do private individuals and organizations have the legal right to file lawsuits to enforce Section 2? This is known as a “private right of action.”
For six decades, it was universally understood that private citizens and civil rights groups could sue under the VRA. In fact, the vast majority of all Section 2 cases have been brought by private litigants, not the federal government.
However, in a radical break with this long-standing practice, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that Congress never intended to create a private right of action and that only the U.S. Attorney General can bring Section 2 lawsuits.
The stakes of this procedural question are immense. Critics argue that eliminating the private right of action would render Section 2 a nullity.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) lacks the resources to monitor and litigate potential voting rights violations in thousands of jurisdictions nationwide and has historically relied on private lawsuits to do the bulk of enforcement work.
Furthermore, enforcement would become entirely dependent on the political priorities of the presidential administration in power. An administration hostile to voting rights could simply choose not to file any cases, effectively suspending the law and leaving voters with no recourse.
On July 24, 2025, the Supreme Court issued an emergency stay, temporarily pausing the Eighth Circuit’s ruling while it considers the case. The Court will now decide whether to make the ban on private lawsuits permanent and nationwide.
These two cases are not independent threats. They represent a coordinated, two-pronged legal assault designed to neutralize the Voting Rights Act. The Callais case is the substantive attack, challenging what the law protects by arguing that its core remedy is unconstitutional. The Turtle Mountain case is the procedural attack, challenging how the law is protected by seeking to eliminate its primary enforcement mechanism.
A victory for VRA opponents in either case would be devastating. A victory in both would be fatal, effectively ending the VRA as a meaningful tool against racial discrimination in voting.
The Consequences of the Court’s Decisions
The Supreme Court’s decisions in these cases will have profound and lasting consequences that extend far beyond legal theory, directly impacting political representation, the balance of power, and the very nature of American democracy.
If Section 2 Protections Are Weakened in Callais
A ruling against the VRA in Callais would effectively end vote dilution claims as they have been understood for decades. Plaintiffs would be caught in a legal catch-22: they could use the Gingles framework to prove their votes were being illegally diluted, but they would be constitutionally barred from implementing the only recognized remedy—the creation of a district where they have an opportunity to elect their preferred candidate.
This would not only prevent future claims but would also invite legal challenges to the dozens of existing majority-minority districts in Congress and state legislatures across the country, particularly in the South.
Political analysts estimate that eliminating these districts could cost the Democratic party a dozen or more seats in the House of Representatives, potentially cementing a Republican majority for a generation. Such a shift would likely trigger the most significant decline in minority representation in Congress in over a century.
Moreover, the VRA currently serves as one of the few remaining checks on extreme partisan gerrymandering. Without the legal obligation to create minority opportunity districts, which tend to elect Democrats, Republican-controlled state legislatures would have a much freer hand to draw maps that maximize their party’s advantage, further entrenching political power and reducing electoral competition.
If Private Enforcement Is Stripped in Turtle Mountain
A ruling against the plaintiffs in Turtle Mountain would mean that the VRA, while still on the books, would become functionally unenforceable. Without the ability of private citizens and civil rights groups to file lawsuits, countless discriminatory maps and voting laws at the state, county, city, and school board levels would go completely unchallenged.
The enforcement of this landmark civil rights law would become a political football, subject entirely to the priorities and resources of the presidential administration in power.
The Broader Impact: A “Patchwork” of Rights
If the Supreme Court severely curtails or eliminates these federal protections, the battle for voting rights will not end; it will shift to the states.
Some states have already passed their own state-level Voting Rights Acts, and more may be pressured to do so. However, this would inevitably create a “patchwork of rights,” where a citizen’s ability to challenge racial discrimination depends on their zip code.
The states with the most extensive histories of discrimination are the least likely to enact strong new protections, creating a scenario where the voters who need federal oversight the most would have the least access to it. This would mark a profound retreat from the 60-year-old principle of a uniform, national standard for the most fundamental right in a democracy: the right to vote.
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