Former Vice President and failed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris ripped into the Supreme Court’s ruling in which a redistricting map in Louisiana, which redrew lines based on race, was struck down, going on to claim that the decision “guts the Voting Rights Act.” Harris took to social media platform X to express her thoughts on SCOTUS ending race-based voting, which, conservatives say benefits Democrats.
Harris referred to the decision as an “outrage,” going on to add that the whole thing was “part of an agenda that conservatives set in place decades ago to steal power from everyday people.” Her post then said that the “court’s decision is motivated by politics and designed to give an upper hand” to President Donald Trump and the GOP.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling guts the Voting Rights Act and turns back the clock on the foundational promise of equality and fairness in our election systems,” Harris went on to write in the post. “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was one of the last remaining protections for Black and brown voters against maps deliberately drawn to dilute their political power. That protection has been stripped away.”
A report from Breitbart News reported that SCOTUS voted 6-3 that the map was an “unconstitutional gerrymander.” However, the highest court in the land did not scrap Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to enforce the Constitution — not collide with it. Unfortunately, lower courts have sometimes applied this Court’s §2 precedents in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids,” Justice Alito wrote.
“This tension between §2 and the Constitution came to a head when Louisiana redrew its congressional districts after the 2020 census. In 2022, a federal judge in the Middle District of Louisiana held that the map adopted by the state legislature likely violated §2 because it did not include an additional majority-black district,” Alito continued in the majority opinion.
“But when the State drew a new map that contained such a district, its new map was challenged as a racial gerrymander. A three-judge court in the Western District of Louisiana held that the new map violated the Equal Protection Clause, and the State appealed to this Court,” he added. The Supreme Court heard arguments in “Louisiana v. Callais” in October 2025.
“For over 30 years, we have assumed for the sake of argument that the answer is yes. And we have gone further and assumed that it is enough if a State ‘ha[s] a strong basis in evidence’ for thinking that the Voting Rights Act requires race-based conduct,” Alito wrote. “But allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context.”
"*" indicates required fields
Former President Barack Obama was also greatly displeased with the Supreme Court’s ruling, saying the decision “effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act,” by allowing “state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities.” He then offered a scathing rebuke of the current Court.
“It serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach,” Obama added.