Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions makes a fleeting reference to the Voting Rights Act and cites some racial gerrymandering cases (including Shaw v. Reno and Miller v. Johnson) for certain propositions about considerations of race in public policy. But there is no real discussion of race consciousness in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. (No Justice cites the just-decided Allen v. Milligan case.)

Justice Sotomayor, in her dissent, however, makes these observations:

The Court suggests that promoting the Fourteenth Amendment’s vision of equality is a “radical” claim of judicial power and the equivalentof “pick[ing] winners and losers based on the color of their skin.” Ante, at 38. The law sometimes requires consideration of race to achieve racial equality. Just like drawing district lines that comply with the Voting Rights Act may require consideration of race along with other demographic factors, achieving racial diversity in higher education requires consideration of race along with “age, economic status, religious and political persuasion, and a variety of other demographic factors.” Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 646 (1993) (“[R]ace consciousness does not lead inevitably to impermissible race discrimination”). Moreover, in ordering the admission of Black children to all-white schools “with all deliberate speed” in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 301 (1955), this Court did not decide that the Black children should receive an “advantag[e] . . . at the expense of” white children. Ante, at 27. It simply enforced the Equal Protection Clause by leveling the playing field.

And footnote 72 of Justice Jackson’s separate dissent cites: D. Tokaji, Realizing the Right To Vote: The Story of Thornburg v. Gingles, in Election Law Stories 133–139 (J. Douglas & E. Mazo eds. 2016).