Voting Rights

No Explanation. No Vote Count. No Accountability. On March 2, 2026, the Supreme Court issued an unsigned, unexplained emergency order keeping New York’s 11th Congressional District map in place — almost certainly through the 2026 midterm elections. A state court had ruled that map unconstitutional because it diluted the voting power of Black and Latino residents. The Supreme Court stepped in and blocked the fix. We don’t know how many justices voted for it. We don’t know what legal standard was applied. We don’t know why the Court acted before New York’s own highest court had a chance to weigh in. We know only the outcome: the Republican-drawn district survives, and the voters whose power it dilutes will have to wait. This is the shadow docket — and this time, it is being used to pick election winners. ...

The Day the Voting Rights Act Died On June 25, 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a 5-4 conservative majority in Shelby County v. Holder, effectively gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965—the most important civil rights legislation in American history. Within hours, Texas announced it would implement the nation’s most restrictive voter ID law—a law that had been blocked under federal preclearance. Three days later, Alabama passed strict photo ID requirements. ...

For sixty years, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has been the main legal tool minority voters have to challenge maps that dilute their political power — the thing that forces states to draw a second majority-Black district when residential segregation and racially polarized voting mean one district isn’t enough to give Black voters a real chance to elect anyone. On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court redefined what it takes to win that kind of claim, in a way that Justice Kagan says renders Section 2 “all but a dead letter.” ...

Something has shifted in how Democrats talk about the Supreme Court — and it’s about time. For years, court reform was treated as a fringe idea. Expand the Court? Too radical. Term limits? Too destabilizing. A binding ethics code? Maybe, someday, if we can find the votes. The conventional wisdom held that the Court, however flawed, was too sacred an institution to touch with structural changes. That conventional wisdom is crumbling. And the redistricting and voting rights rulings of the past few months are exactly why. ...