Thank you Tricia Robbins, Nancy Mitchell, and many others for tuning into my live video with Julian Zelizer!
(transcript):
JONATHAN ALTER:
Hi, I’m Jonathan Alter of Old Goats.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
And I’m Julian Zelizer from The Long View.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
Well, Jon, there was a huge Supreme Court decision this week with Louisiana v. Callais, which undermined another pillar of the Voting Rights Act. This is the second major case since 2013.
I was thinking back to a different era for the Court, for Congress, for American politics. In 1969, four years after Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which President Lyndon Johnson had signed, a case came before the Court involving voting procedures in Virginia and Mississippi.
In that case, the Court upheld what the Voting Rights Act had put into place. It ruled that the preclearance requirements for changes in voting procedures were legitimate and constitutional. Even if those changes looked administrative or technical, they were still subject to the law.
It was a 7–2 decision, and it was very significant because it entrenched this landmark legislation just four years after its passage.
We are in a very different place in 2026. I’m curious for your thoughts.
JONATHAN ALTER:
Well, first of all, this most recent case did not involve preclearance.
Preclearance meant that certain states, mostly in the South, had to get federal approval before changing voting laws. For example, if they wanted to reduce the number of polling places in a county, which could make it harder for Black voters to vote, they had to clear that change with the federal government.
In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court overturned that preclearance requirement. But it left open the possibility that Congress could reapply preclearance nationwide instead of singling out Southern states.
Congress didn’t do that. It should have, but there weren’t the votes.
This new decision goes after other parts of the Voting Rights Act. It doesn’t completely gut the law, but it undermines it. It takes the teeth out of it.
The best argument against this decision came from Elena Kagan, who asked why the Supreme Court is stepping in to do what should be Congress’s job. Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. If Congress wants to change it, it can.
So this is judicial overreach.
We don’t yet know the full consequences. I read a piece this morning suggesting Republicans could pick up two seats as a result of this decision. After the 2030 census, and possibly as early as 2028, you could see a series of redistricting maps that eliminate districts currently represented by Black members of Congress.
What Chief Justice Roberts and the other conservatives are arguing is that we’re past this. We don’t need the Voting Rights Act anymore.
Justice Ginsburg, in her dissent in the Shelby case, said that’s like saying, “It’s storming outside, but I’m not getting wet, so I don’t need an umbrella.”
The Voting Rights Act is that umbrella.
Arguably, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was the most important single piece of legislation in American history. Before that, we weren’t fully a democracy. If you had majority-Black counties in the South with only a handful of Black registered voters, that’s not democracy.
We’ve really only had a full democracy since 1965.
What this decision does is knock another support out from under that democracy. And we have a lot of struggles ahead, including whether we can reform the Supreme Court and build enough political power at both the state and federal levels.
JULIAN ZELIZER:
I would just add two things.
First, many lives were lost, and many people were hurt in the fight for voting rights legislation. It was incredibly difficult to reach that point.
Second, beyond its practical effects, the Voting Rights Act represented a commitment by the federal government that the injustices following Reconstruction would not be tolerated again.
Now we are in a moment when that promise is no longer part of federal policy in the same way. It has been significantly weakened.
We’re at another turning point. We’ll see what happens.
Thanks for talking, Jon.
JONATHAN ALTER:
Thanks, Julian.
