\n<\/p>\n
The voting rights advocates who fought for majority-minority districts across the US south are organizing their next steps after the supreme court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act on Wednesday and eviscerated much of the work of the civil rights era.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that it is deeply troubling that in 2026 that many of us have less rights than our grandparents had \u2013 and that becomes truer and truer every year,\u201d said Ashley K Shelton, CEO and president of Power Coalition for Equality and Justice, a Louisiana-based civic engagement organization and a plaintiff in the Callais case.<\/p>\n
Shortly after the supreme court decision, Shelton said that it was \u201cdeeply disappointing\u201d.<\/p>\n
The VRA, which codified the 15th amendment\u2019s voting protections for the first time, was signed into law after a hard battle. Exactly five weeks prior, approximately 600 people had aimed to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in demand of voting rights.<\/p>\n
On the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the demonstrators were brutally attacked by law enforcement officers, who confronted them with teargas, billy clubs and other weapons. \u201cBloody Sunday\u201d, as the march is remembered due to the viciousness of the attacks, was a turning point in the civil rights movement, and it directly led to the passage of the VRA.<\/p>\n
In the decades since the VRA\u2019s passage, section 2 has allowed plaintiffs to challenge electoral maps that suggest they were drawn in an effectively racially discriminatory way.<\/p>\n
Voting rights advocates, many of whom have worked for decades to empower voters in their states and regions, say the fight isn\u2019t over just because of the decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the answer is for Black voters and other voters of color and voters that believe in a multiracial democracy have to show up en masse in the fall and elect a Congress that will restore our rights,\u201d Shelton said.<\/p>\n
Before the decision, Power Coalition and other organizations had been working to mobilize voters. That doesn\u2019t stop now because of a new hurdle, Shelton said. Many of the organizations are working both in their respective states and out of them, in coalition-building across state lines. As federal policies shift, the ways in which voting advocates respond changes as well.<\/p>\n
State-level voting rights acts were put forth in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. That is not unintentional, said Anneshia Hardy, executive director of Alabama Values, before the decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf section 2 gets weakened, you\u2019re going to see a shift towards a lot of state-level strategies,\u201d Hardy said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to see more localized litigation, deepened investment in on-the-ground organizing. We\u2019re realising that when federal protections are narrowed or become less reliable, which they have, unfortunately, the fight doesn\u2019t stop. It ultimately relocates.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf section 2 is weakened, the states are going to become the primary terrain for both protection and contestation,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Hilary Harris Klein, senior counsel of voting rights at Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ), said that the group remains \u201csteadfast in supporting and advocating for communities seeking their right to an equal voice in government\u201d. Like Hardy, she sees the location of some fights changing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stand on the shoulders of giants, when you think about the civil rights movement and even the work before, from the mid-20th century,\u201d she said. \u201cI think there will be a recognition that we are in a time of retrogression of minority rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think here, we\u2019re going to see enormous mobilization following this decision,\u201d she added. \u201cThe fights might not be in court as much as they have been, but that doesn\u2019t mean that they will be over or anything will be abandoned. The fight for equal voting rights is going to absolutely continue. It just might be in a different venue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many advocates compared this moment to the Jim Crow era.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny efforts to expand access and correct inequality have consistently been met with counterarguments that frame those efforts as unfair or excessive. History gives us those receipts,\u201d Hardy said. \u201cThis is not new.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The voting rights advocates who fought for majority-minority districts across the US south are organizing their next steps after the supreme court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act on Wednesday and eviscerated much of the work of the civil rights era. \u201cI think that it is deeply troubling that in 2026 that many of us<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[5472,160,2171,4392,2785,702,159,3578,4334],"class_list":{"0":"post-48935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-advocates","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-fight","11":"tag-gutting","12":"tag-relocate","13":"tag-rights","14":"tag-supreme","15":"tag-voting","16":"tag-vow"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}