One morning between today and June, the Court will deliver an opinion on a case from Louisiana named Callais v. Landry. The Court will decide whether the Voting Rights Act can continue to protect minority voters from racial discrimination in redistricting.
A majority of justices could very well dismiss the lived reality of discrimination faced by voters of color and strip away one of the last remaining protections against racially rigged maps.
We don’t know the outcome in Callais, but as we wait for what comes next, we know what has happened before.
In 1875, White Redeemers plotted to use murder, fraud and terror to topple the democratically elected state government in Mississippi.
The conspiracy became known as the Mississippi Plan, and it paved the road to the state’s unashamedly racist 1890 constitution, poll taxes, and segregation. Nine Black men served in the House in 1888, six in 1890, and two in 1892 and 1894. There would not be another African American elected to the Mississippi state legislature until Robert G. Clark Jr. won his historic election in 1968.
In the years following Mississippi Plan, Black Mississippians were legislated out of politics. In 1898, the United States Supreme Court upheld Mississippi's racially discriminatory voting and jury selection laws, arguing that facially neutral laws weren't unconstitutional just because officials could use their discretion to discriminate against Black citizens, even though evidence showed they were doing so.
The Court allowed systemic racial disenfranchisement by ignoring the realities of Jim Crow, cementing a legal precedent that prioritized formal neutrality over substantive equality.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act has helped activists and attorneys reverse that legal standing and ensure that judges would no longer blind themselves to lived reality of discrimination.
But today, the Callais plaintiffs argue that the legal tools that helped counter decades of racial discrimination in voting, victimize white voters. The plaintiffs claim that considering race, even to address blatant discrimination, is unlawful.
If the Supreme Court agrees, conservative lawmakers could use the gerrymander to eliminate dozens of legislative and congressional districts where Black voters have a strong voice in elections. Such a decision would strip away one of the last remaining protections against racially rigged maps.