SCOTUS’s Callais Decision Is Working Precisely as Intended
By Diamond Brown and Jenice R. Robinson
Within a month of the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, Southern lawmakers made it painfully clear how those who hold political power in this country intend to keep it. With the Court’s permission, they are systematically silencing communities they see as obstacles to their agenda.
Callais makes it nearly impossible to challenge redistricting maps under the Voting Rights Act (VRA) on the grounds that they are racially discriminatory. In practice, it gives lawmakers a roadmap to insulate racially discriminatory maps from accountability by recasting them as merely partisan exercises.
Alabama wasted no time. It continues to exploit legal loopholes to secure approval for an electoral map that federal courts already found discriminates against Black voters.
And Alabama is hardly alone. Florida passed a gerrymandered map the same day the ruling came down, aimed at delivering four more congressional seats to Republicans. Tennessee’s GOP majority eliminated a more than 100-year-old majority-Black congressional district in Shelby County, Tenn., home to the majority-Black city of Memphis. Louisiana suspended its primaries, with ballots already in the mail, to buy time for a “compliant” map. Rightly so, there has been massive outrage and extensive coverage of how the Court’s decision harms Black communities and reverses hard-won progress.
But there is a deeper story here that is getting lost. An elite, wealthy, powerful class and their allies have spent decades fine-tuning ways to divide the rest of us while they consolidate political and economic power.
The evidence is in the headlines every single day and in the shameless admissions of political leaders themselves. Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton said Callais means “states like Tennessee can redistrict based on partisan politics.” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said, “My job in this office was to put the Legislature in the best possible legal position to draw a congressional map that favors Republicans 7-0.”
Aside from claims that reek of entitlement to one-party rule, none of the lawmakers ramming these partisan, racist maps through have asked voters what they think or explained how they intend to improve the lives of their constituents after hijacking our political system to their advantage.
Black Americans are the clear targets, but anyone who shrugs this off because they don’t care or don’t think this affects them is doing precisely what is intended. The wealthy have always preferred that we ordinary people fight over scraps – that white working-class voters blame their Black and brown neighbors for their struggles – rather than band together to take on powerful elites.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 tore down barriers to the ballot for Black Americans in the South and made it harder to silence communities that challenged political and economic inequity. That is why, over the last decade, they have used legislative and judicial means to attack our right to vote.
In Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, the Supreme Court gutted section 4 of the VRA and in Rucho v. Common Cause in 2019, the Court declared partisan gerrymandering claims beyond the reach of federal courts. Through Callais, the Court has taken a sledgehammer to what was left.
Special interests driving these maps understand something many progressives fail to articulate clearly enough: Political power and economic power are inextricably linked. When communities lose the ability to elect representatives who answer to them, they also lose leverage to fight for living wages, affordable healthcare, housing, workers’ rights, and other protections.
The link between political exclusion and economic hardship is measurable. In 2024, Dēmos, a national organization focused on democracy and economic justice, released its “Power Scorecard,” a data tool examining the relationship between political and economic power across all 50 states. Researchers found that states with lower civic vitality – measured by voter turnout, descriptive representation, voting restrictions, percent of unopposed elections and state laws governing corporate spending on elections – also have higher rates of economic hardship and inequality.
So, what can we do?
First, we must define this moment clearly. The current wave of racial redistricting is not a technical dispute over legal doctrine. It is an effort to consolidate political power, silence dissent and impose one-party rule. Alabama’s continued push for judicial approval of its racially discriminatory map is evidence of that.
Second, progressives must reject the terms of debate imposed by the far right. Arguments suggesting that remedies for racial discrimination somehow harm white voters are not made in good faith. They are distractions designed to pit working people against one another while entrenched political interests tighten their grip on power.
Third, we must recognize the full scope of what is at stake. The forces seeking to weaken Black voting power in Southern states are also advancing broad agendas aimed at weakening unions, deregulating industries, cutting taxes for the wealthy, slashing funding for health care, and attacking civil society organizations.
Finally, this moment demands solidarity. Ordinary people have power when we band together across race, class, and zip code–and when we vote. The aftermath of the Callais decision reveals who holds power in America and how they intend to keep it. The only question left is whether enough of us will see it – really see it – and do something about it.
Diamond Brown is senior policy counsel at Democracy Defenders Action and Jenice R. Robinson is the communications director at Democracy Defenders Action
