The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling weakening a key enforcement tool of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is fueling new concerns in Virginia over the future of Black political representation, particularly if Republicans regain full control of state government after the next census.
In a 6-3 ruling last month in Louisiana v. Callais, the court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map containing a second majority-Black district, concluding the state relied too heavily on race in drawing district lines.
The decision significantly narrowed how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can be used in redistricting disputes and made it more difficult to challenge maps that dilute minority voting strength.
The ruling stopped short of invalidating Section 2 altogether, but critics across Virginia say it represents the most consequential rollback of federal voting rights protections since Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 ruling that eliminated the federal preclearance system requiring states with histories of discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing election laws.
“When my great-grandfather registered to vote, he was forced to take a literacy test and find three white men to vouch for his character,” said U.S. Rep. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, the first Black woman elected to Congress from Virginia.
“My father and grandfather were forced to pay poll taxes to register to vote. My family has felt the weight of voter suppression for generations.”
McClellan said the new ruling “makes it nearly impossible to ensure minority voters have a fair opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice and threatens Black representation across the country.”
But in Virginia, legal experts and political leaders say the fallout could reach much further.
Eric Claville, director of the Center for African American Public Policy at Norfolk State University, said the decision could eventually reshape congressional, state legislative and local political maps if Republicans regain unified control of state government after the 2030 census.
“The ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais is the most devastating decision of the court as it relates to turning back voting rights of African Americans and other people of color,” Claville said. “And I would even dare say what state legislators could do, it would take us back to the pre-Civil War era.”
A law born from the Civil Rights movement
Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, the Voting Rights Act followed decades of racial violence and white-led efforts in the South to keep Black Americans from the ballot box.
The law followed bloody confrontations between voting rights activists and law enforcement in places like the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., and helped dismantle barriers such as literacy tests, poll taxes and other racially discriminatory voting schemes.
Claville said the law dramatically expanded federal oversight of elections in the South.
“There were three things that the Voting Rights Act did,” he said. “Number one, it basically prohibited any type of discriminatory practice used to disenfranchise Black voters, like literacy tests, intimidation, poll taxes, suppression, and the like.”
The law also established federal oversight and preclearance requirements for certain jurisdictions, including Virginia, before those protections were weakened by later Supreme Court rulings.
“Keep in mind,” Claville added, “many people lost their lives fighting for the right to vote.”
Over time, Section 2 became one of the law’s strongest remaining enforcement mechanisms. It allowed minority voters to challenge electoral systems and district maps that diluted their political influence, even absent specific evidence of racist intent.
But the court’s conservative majority in the Callais ruling said that race cannot be the predominant factor in drawing districts, even when states are attempting to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said Louisiana’s effort to create a second majority-Black congressional district violated constitutional equal protection principles because race played too large a role in the process.
The ruling suggested that racial disparities alone may no longer be enough to successfully challenge many voting maps in court.
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan warned that the decision effectively hollowed out one of the nation’s most important civil rights statutes.
Virginia leaders warn of widespread consequences
Democrats and civil rights groups in Virginia condemned the ruling.
“The Voting Rights Act has long protected minority communities from disenfranchisement,” said U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News. “This latest decision by the Supreme Court sets voting rights back decades.”
Scott, currently one of two Black members of Virginia’s congressional delegation, warned that the ruling gives GOP-controlled states more latitude to redraw maps that dilute the electoral strength of minority communities.
“By creating a nearly impossible standard to challenge racial gerrymandering, the court has opened the door for Republican-led states to draw new maps that weaken the ability of minority communities to elect candidates of their choice,” Scott said.
Attorney General Jay Jones, Virginia’s first Black top law enforcement official, tied the ruling to “the determination and perseverance of Black citizens who fought tirelessly and gave their lives over the course of a century so that their children and future generations could cast their vote and participate in our democracy.”
He added: “For over 60 years, the law has served as an essential tool for combatting the legacy of Jim Crow. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court’s decision today ignores that precedent and further undermines the already fragile state of our democracy.”
Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, the first Black House speaker in Virginia history, called the ruling a direct assault on democratic representation.
“The United States Supreme Court took a sledgehammer to the Voting Rights Act,” Scott said. “This decision guts a core part of that protection — silencing communities that have fought and bled to be heard.”
Scott also linked the ruling to Virginia’s recent redistricting battles and ongoing debates over political power in the commonwealth.
“This is exactly why Virginians fought back and voted YES,” he said, referring to the redistricting referendum that Virginia voters advanced April 21. “We made it clear — we’re not going to let politicians rig the system and steal our voices.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., described the ruling as “a very dark day in our history,” saying it threatens decades of civil rights progress.
“The court’s latest ruling will make it extremely difficult to challenge racially discriminatory congressional maps,” Kaine said.
Virginia remains ‘an enigma’ among other states — for now
Despite the alarm from voting rights advocates, NSU’s Claville said Virginia occupies a different political position than many Southern states because Democrats currently control both the executive and legislative branches and because of the state’s demographic shifts over the past two decades.
“For the rest of this decade it doesn’t change at all,” Claville said. “Virginia is an enigma in this situation.”
He pointed to the growing diversity of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads, as well as the record size of the Black delegation in the General Assembly.
“As a matter of fact, the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus has increased to its largest membership in its history,” he said.
That political balance, however, could change after the next statewide election and the 2030 census.
“In the event that Democrats lose power and Republicans gain power and have the numbers, they can redraw districts,” Claville said. “They now have the Supreme Court backing to do so.”
The concerns are already playing out in other GOP-led states, where lawmakers moved quickly after the ruling to revisit congressional maps and election timelines ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“Louisiana eliminated the primary to redraw district lines,” Claville said. “In the next couple of days, Alabama followed, then Tennessee followed.”
In Tennessee, Republican lawmakers moved within days of the Callais ruling to redraw the state’s congressional map in a way that would eliminate the state’s only majority-Black district centered in Memphis. The proposal triggered heated floor debate, with Democratic lawmakers invoking the civil rights movement and accusing Republicans of weakening Black voting power.
The proposed map would split Memphis across several Republican-leaning districts and could leave Tennessee with an all-Republican congressional delegation despite the city’s large Black population.
Claville added that the ruling’s effects extend congressional districts and could influence state legislative and local government maps nationwide.
“This case does not specifically emphasize congressional districts,” he said. “Which means that states can now utilize this decision to draw statewide districts and local districts in order to limit Black representation.”
The ruling came less than two weeks before the Supreme Court of Virginia struck down the commonwealth’s voter-approved redistricting amendment, halting a plan by Democrats that would have allowed mid-decade congressional map changes ahead of the 2026 elections.
Claville said that if Republicans eventually regain full control of state government, districts in Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads could become targets for GOP-led redraws designed to reduce Democratic and minority representation.
However, he added that Republicans likely could not engineer an overwhelming congressional advantage because of Virginia’s increasingly diverse electorate.
“But they’ll try to get as close as they can,” Claville said.
State protections gain new importance
In 2021, Virginia became the first Southern state to enact its own Voting Rights Act, legislation advocates say could now become more important as federal protections weaken.
McClellan, the congresswoman from Richmond who sponsored the legislation as a member of the state Senate at the time, pointed to that law as part of Virginia’s response to what she called a broader erosion of federal safeguards.
“I’ve fought to expand voting rights for decades,” she said.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia said that the Callais ruling makes the state’s own voting protections even more important.
“In light of Callais, there is now greater urgency than ever for states to enact their own Voting Rights Acts,” said Executive Director Mary Bauer.
Bauer warned that restoring lost federal protections will require political and legal battles far beyond the courtroom.
“The Voting Rights Act has been foundational in the creation of a multiracial democracy,” she said, “and rectifying the Supreme Court’s decision … will require a fight in the courts, in statehouses, in the streets, and most of all, at the ballot box.”
Advocates with the New Virginia Majority and the Advancement Project said Virginia’s state protections could become one of the few legal tools left to challenge discriminatory election practices.
“It is clear that states need to protect voters from the federal judicial branch that is obliterating the basic tenets of democracy,” said Tram Nguyen, co-director of Virginia New Minority.
Still, Claville said that no state law can entirely replace the federal protections that once existed under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Section 2 eliminates and misinterprets how race can be used in voting,” he said. “The majority-conservative court believes that no longer should the Voting Rights Act utilize race as a reason to draw any districts.”
He argued that the court’s embrace of what he called “color-blindness redistricting” ignores the continuing racial polarization that still shapes Southern voting patterns.
“The Supreme Court said we live in a colorblind society,” Claville said. “But that’s not the case.”
Claville also pointed to renewed efforts in Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation supporters say would restore some of the protections weakened by recent Supreme Court rulings.
“But in the commonwealth, the only thing that you can do is continue to vote for the party that’s going to be the most inclusive.”
