Clarence Page

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. cautiously praised the hard-won Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a “great step forward” toward removing obstacles that kept Black Americans from voting.

It was. But last week, in striking down a voter redistricting map in Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken that embattled law and the movement that marched and campaigned for it on a disastrous step backward.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker expressed the sentiments of many Americans, particularly Democrats, saying of the high court ruling, “It is an attack on a crown jewel of our democracy.”

As an old-timer, I fondly recall how the passage of the Voting Rights Act intensified the landmark desegregation reforms in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by prohibiting discrimination at the polling place.

Now, the Supreme Court’s rollback of voting rights strikes me like another backlash similar to the one that ended Reconstruction, the era of reform in the tumultuous post-Civil War period that focused on rebuilding the South and defining the rights of some 4 million newly freed African Americans, including some of my ancestors.

The central issue of Louisiana v. Callais, the case the Supreme Court ruled on, was whether Louisiana was justified in drawing a second congressional district where a majority of voters are racial minorities.

The state of Louisiana has six congressional districts, and one-third of its population identifies as Black. Courts had found that, under established Voting Rights Act tests, the state should include a second majority-minority district.

But Louisiana drew only one, so minority plaintiffs sued. Lower courts found that the VRA required Louisiana to draw a second majority-minority district. But after the state complied, white plaintiffs sued, saying the second district drawn with racial goals in mind violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

States under the law are not supposed to enact rules that make it harder for racial minorities to elect their candidates of choice. In 1982, Congress passed an amendment, signed by President Ronald Reagan, stipulating that the Voting Rights Act could be invoked to ensure adequate minority representation. The amendment seemed to work, leading to a steady rise in Black representatives in Congress.

Until now.

The court’s conservative majority maintained that it has upheld the landmark law, as liberal justices accused the court of gutting it.

Either way, in striking down the Louisiana voting map as a racial gerrymander, this outcome could influence how other states defend or challenge maps, too.

The high court’s 6-3 decision was celebrated as a “BIG WIN” by President Donald Trump, who has been pushing Republicans to alter electoral maps in a desperate effort to maintain a hold on the House in the upcoming midterm elections.

While Trump may find the court’s ruling convenient, many Americans see it as partisan and bad jurisprudence.

I’m not ready to declare a new Corrupt Bargain has been foisted upon us, but without squinting too hard, you could have seen this coming from a mile away. A certain kind of conservative has been trying to repeal or gut the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts ever since they were passed, and that kind of conservative now runs the Republican Party.

Callais likely will make it harder to bring successful claims without stronger evidence of intent — which, legal experts point out, is almost impossible to prove without extraordinary mind-reading abilities.