Supreme Court leans toward further weakening landmark Voting Rights Act

The conservative-majority Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider whether to eviscerate a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act in a congressional redistricting case from Louisiana.

WASHINGTON — The conservative-majority Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared open to again undermining the Voting Rights Act in a congressional redistricting case from Louisiana.

The justices, who expanded the scope of the case over the summer, heard oral arguments about whether states can ever consider race in drawing new districts while seeking to comply with Section 2 of the 1965 law, which was enacted to protect minority voters against a backdrop of historic racial discrimination.

The Voting Rights Act has long been a target of conservative legal attacks, with the Supreme Court weakening it in two major rulings in 2013 and 2021.

NAACP president talks the impact of the Supreme Court redistricting case06:27The long-running dispute concerns the congressional map Louisiana was required to redraw last year after it was sued under the Voting Rights Act to ensure that there were two majority-Black districts. The original map had only one such district in a state where a third of the population is Black.

The Supreme Court originally heard the case this year on a narrower set of legal issues, but, in a rare move, it asked in June for the parties to reargue it. The court then raised the stakes by asking the lawyers to focus on a larger constitutional issue.