Allen v. Milligan, an Alabama redistricting case that is now before the Supreme Court for the third time, is a face-palm, wrapped in a head-desk, wrapped in some of the most incompetent legislative draftsmanship that has ever been presented to the justices. If Alabama Republicans have any sense, they will fire all of their lawyers.

About a month ago, the Supreme Court decided Louisiana v. Callais, gutting the federal Voting Rights Act’s safeguards against legislative maps that lock voters of color out of power in the process. Callais effectively repealed a 1982 amendment to the VRA, which prohibited many state laws that have a negative impact of nonwhite voters, even if those laws were not drawn with racist intent.

After Callais, a plaintiff challenging a state’s legislative maps on racial grounds may only prevail “when the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.”

As a practical matter, this is a very difficult bar for voting rights plaintiffs to overcome. Lawyers and judges are not mind readers. And state lawmakers normally aren’t foolish enough to state openly that they drew a particular map in a particular way because they wanted to maximize white power and minimize the voting power of nonwhite voters.

And yet, Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature managed to enact congressional redistricting legislation that openly praises the European American character of much of the state.

Allen turns on congressional maps that the state enacted in a 2023 law, but which have never actually been used in an election. Much of the case turns on the law’s disparate treatment of two regions in the state: the Gulf Coast region of Alabama, and the state’s Black Belt.

While the Black Belt is actually named after the dark-colored soil in that region, it has a high African American population because many enslaved people were brought to the Black Belt prior to the Civil War. The Gulf Coast region, meanwhile, is predominantly white. As a lower court decision that struck down the 2023 maps explains, those maps keep “the Gulf Coast whole,” while simultaneously splitting the Black Belt in a way that shunts many of its Black voters into a majority-white district.

The mere fact that Alabama cracked up the Black Belt while keeping the Gulf Coast intact does not endanger its maps, at least under Callais. The decision is very favorable to gerrymandering, and permits states to draw maps that diminish Black representation so long as the state claims that it is doing so to dilute the votes of Democrats.

But here’s the rub: The 2023 law doesn’t just preserve the white-majority Gulf Coast region intact; it also praises the “shared culture” of that region which stems “from its French and Spanish colonial heritage.” France and Spain, of course, are European countries made up predominantly of white people.

The state legislature, in other words, didn’t just give the Gulf Coast more favorable treatment than it did the Black Belt. It explicitly referenced the Gulf Coast’s shared European culture when it did so. That sure gives rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred!

Will that be enough to persuade this Supreme Court to rule against Alabama’s maps? Who knows? The Court’s most recent gerrymandering decisions appear designed to permit states to draw whatever maps they want, without any federal judicial oversight whatsoever. And a decision in favor of Alabama’s 2023 maps would also benefit the Republican Party.

Six of the Supreme Court’s nine seats are held by Republicans.

But, even after Callais, one of the few things that states should not be allowed to do is draw maps for the explicit purpose of favoring European Americans, while simultaneously disfavoring African Americans. And yet Alabama’s maps may not be able to clear even this very low bar.

On Monday, the Supreme Court decided not to thrust another dagger into the nearly lifeless corpse of the Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is arguably the most successful civil rights law in American history. Before the Roberts Court began to dismantle it, the VRA included a web of provisions intended to prevent states from denying anyone the right to vote because of their race. And the law started to dismantle Jim Crow voter suppression almost immediately after it took effect. Just two years after it became law, Black voter registration rates in Mississippi grew from 6.7 percent to 60 percent.

But the Supreme Court’s Republican majority loathes this law. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a 2021 dissenting opinion, her Court “has treated no statute worse” than the Voting Rights Act. As a young White House lawyer, future Chief Justice John Roberts unsuccessfully pushed then-President Ronald Reagan to veto a 1982 amendment to the VRA that the Court recently repealed in Louisiana v. Callais (2026).

After Callais, it is unclear whether the VRA has any remaining force whatsoever.

The two orders the Court handed down on Monday, meanwhile, concerned an alternative proposal to strangle the Voting Rights Act that Justice Neil Gorsuch floated in a concurring opinion in Brnovich v. DNC (2021), the same case where Kagan said that her Court has treated no law worse than the VRA. But the Monday orders neither endorsed Gorsuch’s theory nor rejected it — it merely asked two lower courts that previously considered this theory to consider it again.

The orders came in two cases, Turtle Mountain Band v. Howe, where the lower court backed Gorsuch’s attempt to further neutralize the VRA, and Board of Election Commissioners v. NAACP, where the lower court rejected Gorsuch’s attack on the law.

It’s unclear why this Supreme Court, which has been so relentlessly hostile toward the VRA, decided to punt this latest fight until some future date. It’s also unclear whether this fight still matters, as the Court has already bled the Voting Rights Act so deeply that the law may no longer actually do anything.

Still, as it appears there is still one more big legal dispute looming over this most diminished of federal laws, let’s take stock of just how much of the Voting Rights Act remains.

Does the Voting Rights Act still do anything at all?

Before the Republican justices started to dismantle the VRA in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the law used several mechanisms to ensure that voters of color were not locked out of power. As originally enacted in 1965, the law required states with a history of racist election practices to “preclear” any new election laws with officials in Washington, DC, to ensure that those laws did not target voters because of their race. This provision was effectively repealed by Shelby County.

Meanwhile, the 1982 amendment required some states to draw a minimal number of majority-Black or majority-Latino legislative districts. And it forbade a state election law that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color,” even if the plaintiffs challenging that law could not prove that it was enacted with racist intent. 

This 1982 amendment was effectively repealed by Callais.

That said, Callais does say that a Voting Rights Act plaintiff may still prevail in very limited circumstances. The law, Justice Samuel Alito claimed in his Callais opinion, “imposes liability only when the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.” So a voting rights plaintiff may still win their case if they can show that a state law was motivated by racist animus.

Realistically, however, this means that the post-Callais Voting Rights Act does no independent work whatsoever. As Alito acknowledges in Callais, the Constitution already contains a voting rights provision — the 15th Amendment — that, in Alito’s words, “bars only state action ‘motivated by a discriminatory purpose.’” So state laws that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race were already illegal before the VRA became law.

Indeed, even prior to the VRA’s enactment in 1965, the Supreme Court did occasionally strike down state election laws that intentionally discriminated on the basis of race, holding that they violated the 15th Amendment. The Voting Rights Act was necessary not because Jim Crow voting laws were legal, but because Jim Crow states were creative. Whenever a court did strike down a state law intended to keep Black people from voting, Southern states would typically respond by enacting a new law that achieved the same goal in a different way — thus forcing civil rights advocates to bring another lawsuit that could take years before another judge issued a new injunction against the new law.

The whole point of preclearance was to prevent racist laws from ever taking effect, and thus prevent Jim Crow lawmakers from outrunning slow-moving courts that were struggling to enforce the 15th Amendment.

Meanwhile, while Jim Crow lawmakers were often quite explicit about their white supremacist goals, by the 1980s most lawmakers who still harbored racist beliefs were shrewd enough not to say such things out loud. The 1982 amendment, which targets state election laws that have negative racial impacts — even if the plaintiffs cannot prove racist intent — was designed to ensure that the VRA would still function even in a world where plaintiffs could not produce direct evidence that a state law was enacted for racist reasons.

The combined effect of Shelby County, Brnovich, Callais, and similar cases, in other words, is to return (or, perhaps, retvrn) US voting rights law to 1964. While some shell of the Voting Rights Act remains on the books, it does not appear to do any independent work that isn’t already done by the 15th Amendment.

And that brings us back to Gorsuch’s proposal in Brnovich, which, if taken to the extreme, could potentially leave voting rights plaintiffs even worse off than they were prior to the Voting Rights Act’s enactment.

Gorsuch wants to make it impossible to sue for violations of the Voting Rights Act

Gorsuch’s concurring opinion in Brnovich suggests that the Voting Rights Act does not include an “implied cause of action.” This means that, if Gorsuch’s view were to prevail in the Supreme Court, no private plaintiff would ever be able to bring a lawsuit alleging a violation of the VRA ever again (although the federal government would still be able to do so, assuming it was controlled by a president who supports voting rights). 

Some federal laws state explicitly that certain individuals or institutions may sue in order to enforce them. When a federal law does not contain such explicit language, however, the Supreme Court has developed a set of rules governing when private parties may sue to enforce the law.

Until last year, these cases were governed by the rule the Court most recently laid out in Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski (2023), which held that a federal law may be enforced by private lawsuits if it is “‘phrased in terms of the persons benefited’ and contains ‘rights-creating,’ individual-centric language with an ‘unmistakable focus on the benefited class.’”

Thus, for example, if a federal law says that “no state may prevent an athletic person from riding a bicycle,” this law would be enforceable by private lawsuits because the law’s text focuses on the people who benefit from it (athletic people). A similar statute saying that “states shall not impede access to bicycles” would be unenforceable by private lawsuits, because that hypothetical law lacks the “individual-centric language” demanded by Talevski.

Two years after Talevski, however, the Court appeared to abandon its framework. In Medina v. Planned Parenthood (2025), the Court considered whether a statute that permits “any individual eligible for medical assistance” under Medicaid to choose their own health provider could sue after a state denied Medicaid benefits to patients who choose Planned Parenthood as their health provider. 

Although this statute clearly permits Medicaid patients to file lawsuits, at least under the Talevski rule, the Court’s Republicans issued a confusing majority opinion disallowing the suit. It is unclear whether Medina was intended to overrule Talevski, or if it was merely a one-off decision that the Republican justices reached because they did not want to rule in favor of an abortion provider.

That said, Medina does include several pages suggesting that federal laws that use the word “right” in their text may be enforced through private lawsuits.

So, with these two competing frameworks in mind, consider the language of the Voting Rights Act:

No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color…

Under Talevski, the VRA may be enforced via private lawsuits because the statute is phrased in terms of the people who benefit from it (“any citizen of the United States”). Similarly, while the Medina decision is difficult to parse, it does suggest that statutes that use the word “right” may be enforced by private lawsuits. And that word is front and center in the Voting Rights Act.

Gorsuch’s Brnovich opinion is only a paragraph long, so it does not explain how Gorsuch reached the odd conclusion that the VRA does not authorize private lawsuits. Gorsuch doesn’t even specify whether he thinks that Talevski’s framework, Medina’s framework, or some secret third thing should govern VRA lawsuits.

But he did write that opinion, and it was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. So it appears that there are at least two votes on the Supreme Court to cut off private lawsuits under the VRA altogether.

One uncertain question is whether these two justices would still permit private plaintiffs to sue under the 15th Amendment. Like the Voting Rights Act, the 15th Amendment’s language (“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”) should permit suits under either Talevski or Medina. But, if Thomas and Gorsuch are willing to shut down VRA suits in the absence of any law or precedent justifying such an outcome, why wouldn’t they also shut down 15th Amendment suits?

We don’t know. But on Monday, the Court decided to delay resolving this question — the question of whether any private plaintiffs may sue under the VRA — until some future date. So we will have to wait until then to find out if Thomas, Gorsuch, or any other justice wants to make federal law even less favorable to voting rights plaintiffs than it was under Jim Crow.

This live blog is now closed.

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The US supreme court has published its opinions, but none of the cases we’ve been watching for were part of the decisions today.

In comments reported by NBC News, House speaker Mike Johnson has said it is “stunning” to him that “House Democrat leadership has put out a statement saying that they’re willing to allow the number one national security tool to go dark over some political disagreement over a very short-term temporary appointment”.

The Democrats’ call for Americans to “protect democracy” from candidate Donald Trump fell flat in the 2024 presidential election. Over and over, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris said that Trump and other Republicans represented an existential threat to the political system, calling out things like Project 2025 and the extreme anti-immigration aims of aides like Stephen Miller, and predicting a more authoritarian second term if Trump were to be reelected.

More than a year into Trump’s second term, we should acknowledge that they were right.

Trump has drastically expanded his executive authority, targeted his enemies using the traditionally apolitical Justice Department, marginalized Congress in the build up to another war in the Middle East, and engaged in a midcycle redistricting effort meant to win the midterm elections before they begin. 

In short, Trump is behaving less like a democratically elected leader — and more like an authoritarian — than ever. At the same time, the Democrats’ “save democracy” message seems to have hit a brick wall, and issues like tackling affordability and the cost of living are rising on the priority list. I don’t think that’s because Americans don’t care about democracy. I think it’s because they want to see the system improved, not just protected.

More than 60 percent of Americans are unsatisfied with democracy as-is, per Gallup polling. And all across the country, I hear the desire for more creativity from both parties in proposing solutions to the major issues driving our politics, as well as a call to improve democracy by making it more responsive to everyday people. So much of the current malaise is driven by an electorate that feels without agency, written out of the process in selecting the president (the Electoral College), in Congress (gerrymandering), or in the Supreme Court (lifelong terms).

So this week on the America, Actually podcast, I talked with Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Cook Political Report, about the state of Trump’s redistricting efforts and ways we can “improve” democracy, not just protect it.

Here’s three things she pointed out:

1) The primary process has been corrupted

Walter argues that the primary system — created over a century ago to wrest nominations away from party bosses in smoke-filled rooms — has a new kind of dysfunction. “The primary process has become as corrupted as it was back then,” she told, pointing to a flood of outside money “attached either to an issue or a corporate interest,” and a primary electorate that skews “very far left or right.” 

Her proposed fix: a single national primary day — rather than months of state-by-state primaries — with an open ballot, where “every voter is allowed to vote. … You don’t have to be a Democrat or a Republican.” It won’t solve everything, she concedes, “but it at least addresses one of the major problems.”

2) Gerrymandering could erase majority-minority districts

The Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais weakening Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has, by Walter’s count, handed Republicans something like a four-to-six-seat advantage in the redistricting wars. In the short term, maps in Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama “basically took three Black-majority districts, two of which were represented by Black members of Congress, and made them safely Republican.” (Though Alabama’s new map is still being litigated.)

But the longer-term threat is bipartisan: She warns the same logic could push Democrats to break up their own majority-Black and majority-Hispanic seats in order to spread those voters into more winnable districts. 

“How far will Democrats be willing to go to expand their advantage in states where they have majority Black or majority Hispanic seats?” she asked — a “real messy” conundrum where both parties may decide minority representation isn’t the priority.

3) Not all reforms work

Reforms alone don’t cure the malaise, Walter cautioned, pointing to California as the cautionary tale. The state has a wish list of electoral reforms — open top-two primaries, easy registration, mail-in voting, ballot initiatives — but as Walters says, “It doesn’t mean that the state is governed better.”

The incentive structure itself is broken, she says: A member of Congress who “keeps your head down and gets stuff done” gets nothing; instead, it “benefits those who make the most noise, do the most damage, refuse to do any sort of compromising.” Until that changes, she told me, “you can create all the reforms you want, but if people feel like the system is broken, they’re not going to participate.”

As always, there’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.