[[link removed]]

CLARENCE THOMAS HAS LONG TRIED TO UNDERCUT THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT.
NOW, HE MAY FINALLY HAVE THE NUMBERS  
[[link removed]]


 

Joan Biskupic
July 11, 2025
CNN
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been imploring his
colleagues for decades to gut a crucial part of the iconic Voting
Rights Act that prohibits practices denying Blacks, Hispanics and
other racial minorities an equal right to vote. _

US Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas in the Oval Office
at the White House on February 5 in Washington, DC., Andrew
Harnik/Getty Images

 

CNN - Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been imploring his
colleagues for decades to gut a crucial part of the iconic Voting
Rights Act that prohibits practices denying Blacks, Hispanics and
other racial minorities an equal right to vote.

When Thomas first laid out his objections in 1994, insisting that the
act was exacerbating rather than easing “racial tensions,” several
colleagues called his position “radical,” and only Antonin Scalia
endorsed it.

But as more right-wing justices have joined the court, the views of
Thomas, a conservative African American, have gained traction.

Now, a mysterious order from the high court in a Louisiana
redistricting case suggests it is seriously reconsidering the scope of
VRA safeguards against congressional and state legislative district
maps that dilute minority votes. The looming battle comes as some
states, notably Alabama
[[link removed]],
are resisting court orders to remedy discrimination, and President
Donald Trump’s Justice Department is abandoning the federal
government’s usual role in protecting minority voting rights.

The justices’ eventual action on this case and other simmering
controversies, which would affect congressional maps used in the 2026
elections and beyond, could lead to a retrenchment of practices that
consider race to ensure that minorities are not put at a disadvantage.
The entire debate necessarily acquires a partisan dimension as Blacks
and other minority voters tend to lean Democratic.

The stakes in the Louisiana dispute pending at the high court rose
when the justices on June 27, the last day of their regular session,
revealed that they had not been able to resolve the case that had been
argued in March. The justices announced it would be reargued in the
upcoming session that begins in October and that they’d issue a
subsequent order regarding additional ground to be covered.

Rarely do the justices order a new argument in a controversy, but when
they do, the move tends to expand the possible consequences, as
happened in the 2010 Citizens United campaign finance dispute. After
reargument, the justices overturned precedent and gave corporations
and labor unions
[[link removed]] new
First Amendment rights for vast spending in elections.

Deepening the puzzle of what may be developing at the Supreme Court,
Thomas wrote a six-page dissenting statement to the June 27 order
in _Louisiana v. Callais_. He was ready to act now.

Thomas wanted the court to rule outright that the VRA’s Section 2,
which requires consideration of voters’ race to ensure that
congressional and state legislative voting districts are drawn fairly,
violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.

“I am hopeful that this Court will soon realize that the conflict
its Section 2 jurisprudence has sown with the Constitution is too
severe to ignore,” Thomas wrote
[[link removed]].

No other justice signed onto that particular Thomas dissent, but in
the past Justice Neil Gorsuch, who succeeded Scalia in 2017, has fully
joined Thomas’ sentiment regarding “the disastrous misadventure of
this Court’s voting rights jurisprudence.”

Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett joined parts of Thomas’
view two years ago, pressing for a “race neutral” approach, in a
controversy over Alabama’s redistricting map.

The four – Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito and Barrett – dissented in that
2023 case of _Allen v. Milligan_
[[link removed]]_ _as
Chief Justice John Roberts crafted a narrow majority to affirm Section
2’s protections for racial minorities in redistricting battles.

Roberts insisted the dissenters’ approach would force the court to
turn its back on a swath of precedent. “Section 2 itself demands
consideration of race” when correcting a discriminatory map, he
wrote. The question whether additional majority-minority districts can
be drawn “involves a quintessentially race-conscious calculus.”

Roberts’ opinion marked a sharp turn in his own opposition to racial
remedies. In a 2007 case, he wrote, “the way to stop discrimination
on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of
race.” Roberts also authored the 2013 milestone, _Shelby County v.
Holder_, that dismantled a separate Voting Rights Act section that had
required states with a history of discrimination to obtain federal
approval for any electoral changes.

During March oral arguments in the Louisiana case, Roberts was
skeptical of the state’s new map with two Black-majority districts,
which were created after a lower court found the original map with a
single Black-majority district likely violated Section 2. Roberts
questioned whether one of the new districts was sufficiently
“compact” to meet standards; he called it “a snake that runs
from one end of the state to the other.”

Gorsuch quickly echoed Roberts, and Gorsuch went further to suggest
any consideration of race, to redraw a discriminatory map, would
breach the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned
[[link removed]] whether
there should be a “durational” limit on the use of Section 2, that
is, that “the authority of a state to engage in race-based
redistricting must have an end point.”

White voters challenging majority-Black district in Louisiana

The pending case began when a US district court found Louisiana’s
original 2022 map, with a single Black-majority district, denied Black
voters an equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates. Black
people make up about one-third of the state’s population. The state
has six congressional districts.

The Louisiana legislature redrew the map to create two Black-majority
districts but also to protect the state’s favored incumbents,
including House Speaker Mike Johnson. A group of mostly White voters
subsequently filed their own lawsuit, saying that the state
legislature unconstitutionally created a racial gerrymander and
adopting some of Thomas’ arguments.

“I would like to think that his view of the VRA is still a radical
view on this court,” said Stuart Naifeh, of the NAACP Legal Defense
and Educational Fund, one of the lawyers who defended Louisiana’s
new map at the high court in March. Naifeh noted that Supreme Court
precedent sets specific standards for when Section 2’s redistricting
remedy is required, with attention to current conditions and racial
polarization in a state.

Naifeh and Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga emphasized
that the court has said legislatures have “breathing room” to
accommodate political interests, such as the protection of incumbents,
along with racial considerations. That is why the lines of some
remedial districts may appear loosely drawn or, as Roberts described
it, snakelike.

Edward Greim, a Kansas City, Missouri, lawyer who represented those
challenging the revised map declined to comment on the court’s new
order and Thomas’ position.

During the oral arguments, Greim urged the justices to consider
whether the VRA remedy had run its course.

“Why are we suddenly now – as voters are becoming more integrated,
why are we suddenly finding new Section 2 districts everywhere? I
think that’s a problem,” he said.

Who gets to enforce VRA’s Section 2?

One related issue the justices could soon take up is whether private
individuals and advocacy groups can sue under the VRA’s Section 2.
That question has grown in salience as the Trump DOJ withdraws or
switches sides in voting rights disputes.

Ruling against Native American tribes
[[link removed]] in
a North Dakota redistricting case, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals
broke with other lower courts and said only the Justice Department
could bring such claims. Lawyers for the tribes told the 8th Circuit
on Wednesday that they will appeal the case to the Supreme Court.

“There is no other circuit in the country in which private
plaintiffs are unable to enforce their rights under Section 2 …”
the lawyers for the two tribes said in their notice to the 8th
Circuit. “As a result, American citizens in the states of this
circuit have fewer enforceable voting rights than the citizens in
every other state in the country.”

The appeals court’sMay ruling built on a separate groundbreaking 8th
Circuit decision, in a 2023 case from Arkansas, that cited the
writings of Justices Gorsuch and Thomas, characterizing the
availability of a private right of action as an “open question.”

Thomas, who became a justice in 1991, has consistently clung to the
VRA views he expounded in the 1994 case of _Holder v. Hall_
[[link removed]].

“The statute was originally perceived as a remedial provision
directed specifically at eradicating discriminatory practices that
restricted blacks’ ability to register and vote in the segregated
South,” he wrote at the time. “Now, the Act has grown into
something entirely different. In construing the Act to cover claims of
vote dilution, we have converted the Act into a device for regulating,
rationing, and apportioning political power among racial and ethnic
groups.”

“In short,” Thomas added, “few devices could be better designed
to exacerbate racial tensions than the consciously segregated
districting system currently being constructed in the name of the
Voting Rights Act.”

_JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN’s Chief Supreme Court analyst, has covered the
Supreme Court for more than twenty-five years and has written several
books on the judiciary. She is the author of the recently published
Nine Black Robes: Inside the Supreme Court’s Drive to the Right and
its Historic Consequences._

_She is also the author of a biography of Chief Justice John Roberts
(The Chief, spring 2019). Her previous books include Sandra Day
O’Connor (2005), American Original: The Life and Constitution of
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (2009) and Breaking In: The Rise
of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice (2014)._

_Biskupic previously was an editor-in-charge for Legal Affairs at
Reuters and, earlier, Supreme Court correspondent for the Washington
Post and for USA Today. A graduate of Georgetown University law
school, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory
journalism in 2015._

_CNN WORLDWIDE is the most honored brand in cable news, reaching more
individuals on television and online than any other cable news
organization in the United States.
Globally, people across the world can watch CNN International, which
is widely distributed in over 200 countries and territories. CNN
Digital is the #1 online news
destination, with more unique visitors than any other news source.
CNN’s award-winning portfolio includes non-scripted programming from
CNN Original Series and
CNN Films for broadcast, streaming and distribution across multiple
platforms. CNN programming can be found on CNN, CNN International and
CNN en Español channels,
on the CNN Originals hub on discovery+, on Max and for pay TV
subscription via CNN.com, CNN apps and cable operator platforms.
Additionally, CNN Newsource is
the world’s most extensively utilized news service partnering with
over 1,000 local and international news organizations around the
world. CNN is a division of Warner Bros.
Discovery._

* Clarence Thomas
[[link removed]]
* Supreme Court
[[link removed]]
* Voting Rights Act
[[link removed]]
* elections
[[link removed]]
* Racism
[[link removed]]
* racial discrimination
[[link removed]]
* redistricting
[[link removed]]
* Alabama
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]