Former President Barack Obama joined several Democrats in criticizing the Supreme Court’s ruling voiding a race-based redistricting map in Louisiana, stating that it “effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act.”
In a post on X, Obama claimed that the decision was “one more example of how a majority of the current” Supreme Court justices seem “intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy.”
“Today’s Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities – so long as they do it under the guise of ‘partisanship’ rather than explicit ‘racial bias,'” Obama said. “And it serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach.”
Breitbart News’s Katherine Hamilton reported that in a 6-3 ruling, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court found that the map was “an unconstitutional gerrymander”:
The conservative majority ruled 6-3 that the map “is an unconstitutional gerrymander,” but stopped short of scrapping Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
“Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to enforce the Constitution — not collide with it. Unfortunately, lower courts have sometimes applied this Court’s §2 precedents in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids,” Justice Alito wrote for the majority.
Other Democrats, such as former Vice President Kamala Harris and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Mamdani stated that it “risks disenfranchising millions of Americans along racial lines.”
“Today’s Supreme Court decision is a direct assault on the promise of the Voting Rights Act,” Mamdani wrote in a post on X. “It risks disenfranchising millions of Americans along racial lines and weakening the very foundation of our democracy.”
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling guts the Voting Rights Act and turns back the clock on the foundational promise of equality and fairness in our election systems,” Harris wrote in a post on X. “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was one of the last remaining federal protections for Black and brown voters against maps deliberately drawn to dilute their political power. That protection has been stripped away.”