Section 2 Is a Dead Letter: How the Court and DOJ Together Dismantled the Voting Rights Act

On April 29, 2026, Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court in Louisiana v. Callais (No. 24–109) — a 6–3 ruling joined by Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett — that affirmed Louisiana's remedial map, SB8, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, even though a lower federal court had ordered a second majority-minority district — an order the majority held exceeded what Section 2 actually requires. The majority did not formally strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but rewrote the Gingles preconditions comprehensively, and it did so not by amending Section 2's text but by holding that the Equal Protection Clause bars remedial maps drawn primarily by race, even to satisfy Section 2 orders. Under the updated framework: illustrative maps must now satisfy all nonracial state goals including partisan goals; racial-polarization evidence must control for partisan preferences; and the totality-of-circumstances inquiry now demands proof of 'an objective likelihood of intentional discrimination' — language Congress never wrote into the statute. The constitutional trap is now set: a state ordered by a court to draw a majority-minority district can be sued for racial gerrymandering if it complies. As Justice Kagan wrote in dissent: 'Today's decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter. In the States where that law continues to matter — the States still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting — minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process.' The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which argued the case, called the ruling 'a devastating blow to critical civil rights protections by permitting states to use partisan gerrymandering as a wholesale excuse to deny Black voters a voice in their government.'

This judicial demolition did not arrive in a vacuum. The Trump administration executed a parallel administrative demolition of the one federal institution capable of contesting it in court. NPR reported on May 19, 2025, that more than 70% of the attorneys who were at the Civil Rights Division on Inauguration Day — approximately 250 lawyers — had left or would leave by the end of that month. The hardest-hit sections were voting rights, education, and special litigation: the precise units required to litigate Section 2 cases. Former Civil Rights Division attorney Stacey Young, an 18-year veteran, said it plainly: 'It's absolutely the dismantling of the division when, in just a couple of months, you have radically diverted enforcement in a way that drives out almost three-quarters of the division.' Under Harmeet Dhillon's leadership, the Civil Rights Division withdrew its participation in approximately 30 cases, including cases related to voting rights — gutting the federal enforcement posture before Callais even came down.

The Texas redistricting episode illustrates what judicial and administrative demolition operating in lockstep looks like in practice. On July 7, 2025, Assistant Attorney General Dhillon sent a letter to Governor Abbott alleging that four specific Texas congressional districts — including the 9th, 18th, and 33rd in Houston — violated the Constitution. Abbott cited the letter as justification for calling a special session. The legislature passed HB 4 on August 23, 2025, and Abbott signed it August 29; the map was designed to flip five Democratic seats Republican. A three-judge federal panel in LULAC v. Abbott enjoined the map on November 18, 2025, finding it a racial gerrymander and noting the legislature had dismantled not only the four districts DOJ named but 'several other coalition districts around the State.' The Supreme Court stayed that injunction on December 4, 2025. In this episode, DOJ did not merely stand down — it actively instigated the redistricting that courts found racially discriminatory (LULAC v. Abbott, W.D. Tex., Nov. 18, 2025 order).

Reversal requires parallel tracks. Congress must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore a modernized preclearance formula — the void Shelby County opened and Callais has now deepened can only be filled legislatively. The next administration must immediately rebuild the Voting Section, reinstate withdrawn Section 2 cases, and affirmatively contest every redistricting cycle where racial vote dilution is documented. In the interim, private litigants — the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Brennan Center, and Democracy Docket — are the last line of legal defense. But no private organization, however resourced, can substitute for a federal government that has chosen to stand down. Black elected representation grew substantially in the decades following the VRA's enactment in substantial part because of Section 2 enforcement. That progress is now at direct legal risk from a Court that has rewritten the statute and an administration that burned down the agency responsible for defending it.