In a seismic ruling this week that could roll back six decades of civil rights progress, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted much of what remained of the Voting Rights Act.

This is an existential moment for fair representation and American democracy — and Congress must act.

When Texan Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965, there were only five Black members in the U.S. House, none of them from the South, and just four Latino members. 

Thanks in large part to the Act’s protections against racially discriminatory voting laws, those numbers would change dramatically over the next 60 years. In the current Congress, there are a record 65 Black and 53 Latino members of the House.

But many of those hard-fought gains are now at risk.

The Voting Rights Act provided long-marginalized voters of color with enforcement tools against racial discrimination in voting policies and practices, including voting maps that prevented them from gaining political power. But after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, it is now all but impossible to bring any challenges against racial discrimination in voting.

When faced with a claim that a map is racially discriminatory, all a state or local government needs to do is assert, with a wink and a nod, that its line-drawing choices were motivated by partisanship rather than race. (Never mind that in Louisiana and much of the South, race and politics are closely aligned and often hard to distinguish.) 

This is a sea change. In 2019, when the Supreme Court said partisan gerrymandering claims were beyond the purview of federal courts, it nonetheless described the practice as “incompatible with democratic principles.”

With the decision in Callais, partisan gerrymandering has been transformed from something to be eschewed into a sacrosanct right of states that takes priority over key voting rights laws.

The impact of Callais will be severe. Already, white elected officials in seven southern states — Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina — have called for congressional maps to be redrawn or further redrawn in the middle of Primary season and just months before November’s Midterms to diminish Black and Latino districts under the guise of partisan gerrymandering.

Louisiana has even canceled its 2026 Primary after mail voting had already begun, drawing a new map. Key Texas lawmakers have indicated the state may join them when the legislature reconvenes in 2027.

But the impact of Callais will extend well beyond Congress. Expect attacks on School Board, City Council, and other local government districts as well. Districts that have given voters of color a seat at the table, in many cases for decades, may soon be dismantled.

However, this does not have to be the end of the road. The Supreme Court may have created a grim reality where drawing maps is a Wild West free for all at the expense of voters of color.

But Congress can still fix it — if lawmakers can summon the will to act.

Passing a nationwide ban on partisan gerrymandering would go a long way toward addressing the loophole for racial discrimination created by Callais. Indeed, Congress came close to passing just such a ban in 2022.

It failed only because two Democratic Senators, who are no longer in office, refused to back a change to archaic Senate rules to allow the bill to come to the floor for an up-or-down vote.

Likewise, Congress can modernize the Voting Rights Act for the 21st century, which would not only restore key protections but update them to survive attempts of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority to undermine them.

The need for a forceful response is more urgent than ever. The next Census is less than four years away, with fast-growing southern states projected to gain another nine House seats powered largely by the growth of communities of color. But that growth may never be reflected in Congress, on city councils or on School Boards, unless Congress steps in.

When the nation was contemplating independence 250 years ago, John Adams wrote that legislative bodies should be “in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large.” While the nation has never fully achieved that vision, the Voting Rights Act moved it closer, allowing long-excluded communities to win elections for the first time. With those gains now under threat, it is time for Congress and all Americans to recommit to the principle that democracy is, in fact, for all.

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Michael Li is senior counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.

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