Developments in recent weeks signaled that some members of the court think there is more work to be done in removing legal guardrails governing elections. There are now signs that court is considering striking down or severely constraining the remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act, a towering achievement of the civil rights movement that has protected the rights of minority voters since it was enacted 60 years ago last week.
Taken together, the court’s actions in election cases in recent years have shown great tolerance for partisan gamesmanship and great skepticism about federal laws on campaign spending and minority rights. The court’s rulings have been of a piece with its conservative wing’s jurisprudential commitments: giving states leeway in many realms, insisting on an expansive interpretation of the First Amendment and casting a skeptical eye on government racial classifications. . . .
Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the Roberts court may be moving in the opposite direction.
“At least some of the conservative justices on the court seem ready to turn the clock back to the early 1960s,” he said, “when courts imposed very little constraints on the most blatant power grabs, and before Congress exercised its constitutional powers to protect voting rights.” . . .
Holding Section 2 unconstitutional could be a boon for Republicans, said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard, as it would allow states to eliminate minority-opportunity districts altogether.
That would make it easy, he said, to draw completely Republican maps in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and elsewhere.Even if the court stops short of holding Section 2 unconstitutional, it could do great damage to it in another case the court may consider in the term that starts in October. A theory recently adopted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit says that only the government, not voters and other private parties, can sue to enforce the provision.