David Gans for Slate:
In the two decades John Roberts has served as chief justice, the Supreme Court he presides over has repeatedly decimated the Voting Rights Act, striking a series of savage blows to the law long hailed as the crown jewel of the Civil Rights Movement. This term, in Louisiana v. Callais, the Voting Rights Act is in the crosshairs once again, as the court’s conservative supermajority might strike down the act’s last standing pillar.
Callais, which will be re-argued on Oct. 15, began as a narrow case about whether Louisiana had created a racial gerrymander when it drew a new congressional map to remedy a Voting Rights Act violation in the state’s 2022 congressional districts. But in June, the justices ordered the case reheard, and last month, asked the parties to address a much bigger question: whether intentionally drawing a Black-majority district to comply with the Voting Rights Act is itself unconstitutional under the 14th or 15th Amendment. That the court would even ask the question has left many worried that it may be about to gut Section 2 of the VRA—a nationwide prohibition on laws that result in a denial of equal political opportunity—based on an ahistorical, colorblind reading of the Constitution.
The attack on the Voting Rights Act in Callais is deeply inconsistent with the Constitution’s text and history. To understand why requires engaging with the Black struggle for voting rights that culminated with the passage and ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870. As this history shows, race-consciousness is baked into the text and history of the 15th Amendment….