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WASHINGTON, D.C. – America First Legal (AFL), in partnership with Mitchell Law PLLC and Lawfair LLC, has filed an amicus brief in Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to declare Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional.
Section 2, as currently applied, shreds equal protection by compelling courts to treat Americans as members of racial blocs instead of individuals with diverse views. If allowed to stand, it will hardwire racial stereotyping into our elections, silence the voices of countless voters, and crudely tie democratic representation to skin color. That outcome is not only unconstitutional: it is un-American and poisonous to our republic.
AFL’s brief argues that Section 2 requires courts to assume that voters of a given race think alike and prefer the same candidates, an “offensive and demeaning” stereotype the Court has repeatedly condemned. The U.S. Constitution protects individual rights, not group entitlements — and it cannot tolerate a regime that forces judges to sort voters by race.
AFL’s brief also asserts that Section 2’s “results” test exceeds Congress’s authority to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Those amendments prohibit intentional racial discrimination, not neutral laws that happen to have a racially disproportionate effect.
Yet Section 2, as currently interpreted, purports to preempt any state voting law that produces disparate racial outcomes, even in the absence of any discriminatory motive or intent. This sweeping regime is neither a “congruent” nor a “proportional” remedy to a documented pattern of constitutional violations, as the Court has required. Section 2’s egregious regime licenses federal courts to micromanage state election laws on the flimsiest grounds, resulting in an unlawful power grab.
America First Legal will continue fighting to defend the Constitution, dismantle racial discrimination in our laws, and ensure that the promise of equal protection applies to every American.
Read the full brief here.
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