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When the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais on Wednesday, I knew exactly who I needed to call to dissect its full impact.
Charles Douglas is the Executive Director of Common Power, a voting rights organization that deploys trained volunteers across the country to knock doors for pro-democracy candidates in the races that matter most. Dr. Terry Anne Scott is the Director of the Institute for Common Power, the educational wing of the organization, which runs workshops, lectures, learning tours, and national educational events that connect people to the history behind the fights we are having right now.
I could not have asked for a more fitting backdrop. Dr. Scott was at The King Center in Atlanta, in the middle of a Common Power learning tour through Georgia and Alabama, walking people through the history of voting rights in the exact places where that history was made. Charles was at Common Power headquarters in Seattle, already planning the organizational response.
We covered the full scope of what this ruling actually does, starting with Dr. Scott’s historical framework tracing voter suppression from Reconstruction through Jim Crow through the Roberts Court’s systematic dismantling of the VRA. We got into the two-track impact analysis: catastrophic for Black political power in the South, less immediately devastating for House control nationally in the midterms, but with generational consequences for 2028 and beyond.
We broke down Alito’s claim that racism is effectively over, what facially neutral laws actually do, and why the 1982 amendment Congress passed to strengthen Section 2 has now been reversed from the bench. And we closed on what the pro-democracy coalition actually does next, from Supreme Court reform as a 2028 debate to the dummymander backfire risk to the record numbers of people showing up to knock doors with Common Power right now.
This conversation left me hopeful. Not because the ruling is anything other than devastating. But because the people who understand it best are already back at work.
Watch the full conversation above and read the key takeaways below.
What SCOTUS Actually Did — And Why It’s The Culmination Of A Decades-Long Project
We opened with the historical foundation because you cannot understand the magnitude of this ruling without understanding why the Voting Rights Act existed in the first place. What follows is not ancient history. It is the direct lineage of what happened on Wednesday.
Dr. Scott laid out the post-Reconstruction collapse: Mississippi had a 96% Black male voter registration rate during Reconstruction. After Jim Crow laws, literacy tests, poll taxes, and racialized violence, including lynching, were deployed to suppress the vote, that number dropped to 4.7%. White Southerners called it ending “Negro domination,” and they pursued it systematically.
The 19th Amendment, which people celebrate as women getting the right to vote, applied to white women. Black women, Puerto Rican women, and Indigenous women did not receive that right. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was the hard-fought remedy for decades of targeted exclusion, not a gift handed down from above.
The Roberts Court has been dismantling that remedy piece by piece. Shelby v. Holder in 2013 gutted preclearance, which required states with a history of racial discrimination to get federal approval before changing voting laws. Brnovich v. DNC in 2021 made it harder to challenge restrictive voting laws under Section 2. Wednesday’s ruling effectively finishes the job by reversing the 1982 amendment to Section 2 that Congress passed specifically to make discrimination cases winnable.
I raised what I see as the core legal outrage: Congress passed that 1982 amendment precisely because the intentional discrimination standard was too hard to prove in court. Alito has now reinstated that standard from the bench, reversing a congressional fix to a problem he has just recreated. He overruled Congress while pretending to interpret their law.
Dr. Scott’s facially neutral laws framework is essential here. Within hours of the Shelby ruling in 2013, Texas passed voter ID laws that disproportionately disenfranchised Black and brown voters. Georgia criminalized the distribution of food and water to people waiting in line to vote. That law sounds neutral on its face. In application, it targeted Black voters who stood in line six to thirteen hours in 2020. These are the laws that Section 2 was designed to stop. Now it cannot.
Dr. Scott was direct: this is a backlash to progress. It is a historical parallel to what white Southerners did after Reconstruction when Black political power reached its peak. Make no mistake about what this ruling is and what it is designed to accomplish.
The Real Impact: 15 Black Congressional Seats & A Return To Pre-Reconstruction Representation
Charles gave the two-track analysis that I think is most useful for understanding both the immediate and long-term consequences.
Track one is the damage to Black political power in the South, and it is severe. An NPR analysis found that this ruling could result in 15 seats currently held by Black members of Congress being redrawn, a level of racial upheaval not seen since the end of Reconstruction. Charles named it plainly: African Americans who have fought the hardest and longest for their voting rights in this country are going to lose representatives who actually represent their interests.
Dr. Scott made the point that this extends beyond the South and beyond Black voters. The 1965 Voting Rights Act covered any district in the country with a history of racial discrimination, including districts in New York and California. Latino voters, Indigenous voters, and other marginalized groups are all at risk. And because Black voters vote Democratic at high rates, this is also a partisan attack designed to structurally disadvantage one party.
One congressperson who could be impacted is Shomari Figures, a Black representative from Montgomery, Alabama, whom Common Power backed. He is the first Black representative to represent Montgomery since the 1800s. Under the terms of this ruling, his district is among those that could be redrawn out of existence.
Track two is the near-term national picture, and Charles was honest that it is less immediately devastating for House control in 2026 than the headlines suggest. Most primaries have already happened. I noted that the ruling came too late for most states to act before the 2026 midterms. Louisiana will likely redraw and lose a Democratic district or two. Governor DeSantis redrew Florida’s maps, anticipating this ruling, and will use it to try to eliminate four Democratic seats. Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn is pushing for action before November. But the dummymander dynamic we have discussed in previous episodes still applies: Republicans are drawing maps based on 2024 data that no longer reflects Latino sentiment toward Trump.
Charles made a point worth sitting with on the longer structural consequence: what you will increasingly see is blue states with only blue districts and red states with only red districts. General elections become less competitive. Primary elections become real fights. And primaries only activate the most committed voters, pushing everyone further into their corners. That is not good for democracy anywhere.
SCOTUS Declared Racism Over. We Have Some Thoughts.
Alito’s majority opinion echoed Roberts. Both claimed that vast social change has made the Voting Rights Act less necessary. Charles, Dr. Scott, and I are three Black people in America. We did not receive that memo.
Alito wrote that “vast social change has occurred throughout the country and particularly in the South, which have made great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination.” Roberts wrote something nearly identical in 2013 in Shelby: “Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” The through-line is unmistakable. This has been the strategy for over a decade.
Charles’s response: he said he would actually respect them more if they were just honest that racism is back and it is okay. That is how the Republican Party at the top operates. Instead, they hide behind the claim that the problem is solved while systematically dismantling the protections that addressed it.
Dr. Scott made the observation that cuts to the core of what is happening: MAGA and these officials want us to believe racism has gone away as a force harming Black people. But they are very vocal in calling the creation of majority-Black districts racist. They struck down a district that gave Louisiana’s Black residents, who are one-third of the state’s population, one-third of its representation, and called that representation itself an act of racial discrimination. The logic is that it is racist to protect Black political power but not racist to eliminate it.
The facially neutral laws point applies directly to this ruling. What Alito has done is give states permission to create racially discriminatory maps as long as they do not write “I hereby am a racist” into the legislation. Effect-based discrimination is no longer litigable. Intent must be proven. And intent, as any historian of American racism can tell you, is almost never written into the law. That is the entire history of facially neutral discrimination in this country.
Charles noted the broader context that makes the “racism is over” claim particularly absurd: we are two years into a Trump administration that has openly protected racist policies and racist elected officials. If anything, the more honest claim is not that racism ended but that it is back and it has permission. The court’s reasoning requires ignoring everything happening in plain sight.
How We Fight Back — And Why There’s Reason For Hope
Dr. Scott and Charles both brought the hope, and I want to make sure that it lands alongside the alarm. These are not people who peddle false comfort. They are people who have been doing this work for years.
Dr. Scott closed by invoking Mr. Charles Mauldin, the Bloody Sunday foot soldier who was traveling with the learning tour. He was beaten on that bridge at 17 years old alongside John Lewis, and got up and went back again and again until the march reached Montgomery and the 1965 Voting Rights Act became law. The people who won those rights faced far worse odds than we face now. That is not a reason for complacency. It is a reason for fuel.
Charles made the argument I found strategically useful: this ruling is going to function as a massive get-out-the-vote catalyst. When communities face not just headwinds but complete elimination from the political map, turnout spikes. The people whose representation is being erased are going to show up at the polls in ways that will surprise the people doing the erasing.
Dr. Scott’s data point from the Institute confirmed this. Educators across the country, who in past years were nervous about being seen as political, are now signing up to knock doors with Common Power in record numbers. There are not enough spots for all of them. That level of activation from a historically cautious demographic tells you something real about where the energy is.
The dummymander backfire risk is real and worth naming as a source of legitimate optimism. Republicans in states like Indiana and Oklahoma are already saying they do not want to redistrict because their incumbents are comfortable in their safe red seats and do not want to put themselves at risk. And any state that does redistricting based on 2024 Latino support numbers is going to be working with data that no longer reflects reality. They may dilute their own safe seats trying to eliminate Democratic ones.
Democrats in blue states are feeling emboldened to respond in kind. Illinois, New York, Colorado, and Maryland are all moving. Governor Pritzker has spoken about going harder. I made the point that without the Voting Rights Act as a constraint, there may be new demographic configurations available to Democratic mapmakers that did not exist before. The playing field they created may not advantage them the way they think.
Supreme Court reform is going to be a defining debate on the 2028 presidential stage. Court expansion, term limits, impeachment of justices who lied under oath about precedent, all of it is going to move from controversial to mainstream. Dr. Scott noted that white women, who became loudly activated after Dobbs, are a key constituency for building the coalition that demands reform. Charles predicted that Medicare for all, court expansion, and term limits will all be default positions by the time the 2028 primary begins, in the same way that affordability became old hat within a year of Trump taking office.
The path Charles described is the one I believe in: take power. There is no lobbying your way out of this. There is no writing letters to Republican officials. The only mechanism that works is electing people who believe in a level playing field, whether they are Democrats, independents, or moderate Republicans who are done with what this party has become. Common Power is deploying volunteers to elections across the country. The doors are being knocked. The work is being done.
Dr. Scott’s closing framework is the one I want to leave people with: education without action is a privilege. Action without education is a mistake. You need both. Go to a school board meeting. Learn how to talk to people across difference. And if you can, travel with Common Power and knock on doors. That is where you learn what is actually driving voters and what they actually need. That is where democracy gets made or lost.
Bottom Line
The Roberts Court finished what it started in 2013. Black political representation in the South faces a rollback not seen since the end of Reconstruction. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, won at Bloody Sunday and signed into law six decades ago, has been gutted by six justices who have decided that racism is over.
It is not over. The people who know that best are the ones already back at work.
If you want to be part of that work, go to commonpower.org and the Institute for Common Power. Knock on some doors and engage with their educational work. Also, if you’re not already, consider supporting my independent journalism with a paid subscription. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! It truly means a lot. Independent media runs on the people who back it.
