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DEMOCRATS JUST WON SEATS IN MISSISSIPPI. THE SUPREME COURT COULD
BLOCK A REPEAT.  
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Josh Gerstein
December 20, 2025
Politico
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_ A veteran civil rights attorney won a landmark redistricting case.
He fears such wins could soon vanish. _

Members of the Supreme Court sit for a group portrait at the Supreme
Court building in Washington, Oct. 7, 2022., J. Scott Applewhite/AP

 

The beleaguered Voting Rights Act is on the ropes again — and it may
soon suffer a crippling strike.

The Supreme Court seems on the verge of making it much harder to use
the landmark civil rights measure
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to force states to draw districts where minority candidates stand a
strong chance of winning. And a key provision that lets private groups
sue under the 60-year-old law could be the next to fall.

That would be a huge blow to civil rights lawyers like Mississippi’s
Carroll Rhodes, who’s spent his career leveraging the Voting Rights
Act to increase the political power of Black people and other
minorities.

“It becomes almost an impossible hill to climb,” Rhodes told
POLITICO Magazine.

Over the past decade or so, the VRA has been battered by a series of
hits from the increasingly conservative high court. In 2013, the
justices knocked out a key pillar of the law
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by eliminating “pre-clearance” requirements for advance approval
of voting changes, including redistricting, in most or all of nine
states and a smattering of localities.

In recent months, petitions have stacked up at the Supreme Court that
could lead to the justices wiping out the long-assumed right of
private groups and individuals to bring lawsuits under the law. And,
earlier this month, the high court blocked
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a lower court’s Voting Rights Act ruling and gave Texas a green
light to redraw its congressional map at President Donald Trump’s
request in order to give Republicans up to five additional House
seats.

Despite those challenges, litigators like Rhodes have had significant
success harnessing the VRA. A lawsuit he pressed forced redistricting
and a special election in Mississippi last month led to Black
Democrats picking up two additional seats
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in the state’s House. The incremental gain broke a longstanding GOP
supermajority in a state that is nearly 40 percent Black — the
highest percentage in the nation. Those sorts of advances for minority
representation could come to a halt if the Supreme Court rules against
the law.

I reached Rhodes at his law office in the small town of Hazelhurst,
Miss. and asked him to take stock of the bruises the VRA has
sustained, the threats it faces at the moment and how he’s managed
to use the law to advance minority power in his home state.

_This interview has been edited for length and clarity._

THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT HAS TAKEN A LOT OF MAJOR HITS FROM THE SUPREME
COURT IN THE PAST COUPLE DECADES. MANY LAWYERS NOW SEE IT AS TEETERING
ON THE BRINK OF IRRELEVANCE OR IMPOTENCE. WHAT ARE THE STAKES IN THE
PENDING CASE, _LOUISIANA V. CALLAIS_, AND WHETHER STATES DOING
REDISTRICTING CAN SOMETIMES MAKE USE OF RACE TO COMPLY WITH THE VRA?

Some people are concerned that the Voting Rights Act might be on its
way out, but I’m an eternal optimist. Given that the Voting Rights
Act was passed by Congress pursuant to the 15th Amendment, and the
15th Amendment guarantees the right to vote on an equal basis, not on
account of race, to everyone — I think in the _Callais_ case that
they’re going to resolve that issue in favor of [the law] being
upheld.

YOU’VE HAD CONSIDERABLE SUCCESS IN MISSISSIPPI WITH THE VOTING
RIGHTS ACT AND THE STATE LEGISLATURE THERE. DOES THAT CONFOUND
PERCEPTIONS THAT THE VRA IS AT DEATH’S DOOR?

We have been successful. A lot of civil rights organizations and civil
rights opponents have been successful in using the Voting Rights Act
to increase the number of Black elected officials.

In Mississippi, for the most part, whites do not vote for Black
candidates in contested elections, and that’s why the Voting Rights
Act has been so successful in creating Black majority districts.

When you have a minority population that’s large enough,
concentrated enough, and they’re in these election districts where
they cannot elect candidates of their choice — because the majority
population always votes against their candidates of choice — you
have to redraw the districts in such a way so you give this large,
geographically insular minority group the ability to elect the
representative of their choice. And Mississippi’s demographics have
made it easier for us to be successful here.

HAS THERE BEEN A CONCRETE IMPACT TO THIS?

There was a time where we had 45 or 50 Black people elected from Black
majority districts in the Mississippi Legislature. And there were
Black chairmen of different committees, even the powerful committees.
But what has happened over the years, more and more white Democrats
have left the Democratic Party and gone toward the Republican Party,
so now you have a [GOP] supermajority in the Senate. We broke that in
this last election.

When you break the supermajority in the Senate, money bills,
especially taxing and spending, budget, a lot of times it takes a
supermajority to get those bills passed. If there is no supermajority,
then that means that the Republican leadership within the Senate will
have to negotiate with most of the Black people elected as Democrats.

HAVE THOSE LEGISLATORS BEEN ABLE TO USE THIS EFFECTIVE VETO TO
ACTUALLY GET SOME SPENDING CONCESSIONS IN TERMS OF, “YOU’RE GOING
TO SPEND IN THIS PART OF THE STATE OR ON THESE TYPES OF PROGRAMS?”

We won’t know yet because the special election just took place, and
the legislature comes back in January. So, we will see if this
cohesive group of Black Democrats can get some concessions.

IN 2013, CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS WROTE THE _SHELBY COUNTY_ DECISION
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WHICH ENDED THE REQUIREMENT THAT MANY STATES, INCLUDING MISSISSIPPI,
MOST PLACES ACROSS THE SOUTH AND A FEW IN THE NORTH, HAD TO SUBMIT ANY
VOTING CHANGES — INCLUDING REDISTRICTING — TO THE JUSTICE
DEPARTMENT TO GET APPROVED. THE MAPS THAT MISSISSIPPI ADOPTED IN 2022,
WHICH YOU SUCCESSFULLY CHALLENGED IN COURT, WERE THEY PUT IN PLACE
INITIALLY BECAUSE OF THE _SHELBY COUNTY_ DECISION?

They were able to do it directly because of _Shelby County_, yes. And
John Roberts got it wrong. I agree with Justice Ginsburg who said at
the time, it’s like standing up under the umbrella and it’s not
raining and saying, “Oh, it’s not raining, so you can let the
umbrella down.” That’s what that Roberts decision did: took the
umbrella down. And rain is falling everywhere.

UNDER THE PROCESS ESSENTIALLY ABANDONED AFTER _SHELBY COUNTY_, THE
MAPS HAD TO BE SUBMITTED TO WASHINGTON, AND THAT TOOK PLACE UNDER
PRESIDENTS BOTH REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRAT. THE MAPS THAT YOU CHALLENGED,
DO YOU THINK PRESIDENT OBAMA’S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WOULD HAVE
APPROVED THEM? WHAT ABOUT PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH’S JUSTICE
DEPARTMENT OR PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT?

The Trump Justice Department would have approved them, but no other
president. And I’m going to go back to Obama, Biden, Clinton, I’d
even go back to Ronald Reagan. The strange thing is that Ronald Reagan
initially was opposed to the Voting Rights Act extension in 1982 but
wound up signing it and cited it as the crown jewel of American
democracy. And so the Trump Justice Department probably is the only
one, because the Trump Justice Department had flipped what the purpose
of the Voting Rights Act was — to protect minority voters — to say
it’s to protect white voters.

ROBERTS HAS BEEN ON THE COURT NOW FOR 22 YEARS. THE FIRST DECADE AND A
HALF OR SO, HE WAS VIEWED UNIFORMLY AS HOSTILE TO VOTING RIGHTS
ENFORCEMENT. THAT WAS SEEN AS ONE OF HIS ANIMATING ISSUES. BUT THERE
HAVE BEEN A FEW DECISIONS IN RECENT YEARS WHERE THE COURT HAS NOT BEEN
AS AGGRESSIVE TOWARD THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT AS SOME EXPECTED. IT SEEMS
LIKE ROBERTS WENT ALONG WITH THIS CURRENT _CALLAIS_ CASE BEING PUNTED
FOR A YEAR
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WHICH BASICALLY LEFT THOSE DISTRICTS IN PLACE THROUGH THE CURRENT
ELECTION CYCLE. IS THERE SOMETHING GOING ON WITH ROBERTS? DO YOU THINK
HE HAS SHIFTED OR MODERATED AT ALL?

My personal take is that he really is really an incrementalist. He’s
not for upending longstanding precedent and what the country has
become accustomed to. He believes in incremental changes and I think
the _Shelby County_ decision came about because he genuinely thought
that so much advancement had been made in this area that it was no
longer necessary for those protections. And I think after _Shelby
County,_ he’s seen that those protections are still needed. His
views might be moderating somewhat. He might see the damage that
_Shelby County_ decision has caused.

YOU’VE HAD THIS SPAN OF FOUR OR FIVE DECADES TO LOOK AT HOW THESE
THINGS HAVE DEVELOPED. HOW HAS TECHNOLOGY CHANGED THIS PROCESS OF
REDISTRICTING? HAS IT MADE IT EASIER FOR THOSE TRYING TO DILUTE THE
POWER OF MINORITY VOTERS TO DO THAT, AND HAVE PEOPLE ON YOUR SIDE OF
THE FIGHT BEEN ABLE TO HARNESS THAT TECHNOLOGY IN ANY SIMILAR FASHION
TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST THOSE EFFORTS?

When I first started out in this area, the map drawers used maps and
pencils and even had notepads to add before the calculators came. Then
calculators and then the programs and social science has developed
over the years, too. Statistical analysis has become more and more
sophisticated, and the technology has become more and more
sophisticated.

My take is that whoever writes the algorithm, whoever writes the code,
the code can be written in such a way that it could lead to more
discrimination and make it harder to undo.

We do have folks on our side who are using technology, but technology
was used in the Texas case to draw districts in such a way that
discriminated against Black and Latino voters in Texas.

YOU WERE A TEENAGER WHEN A LOT OF THESE LANDMARK CIVIL RIGHTS LAWS
WERE PASSED IN THE ‘60S. DO YOU PERSONALLY HAVE MEMORIES OF WHAT THE
JIM CROW SOUTH WAS LIKE? DID ANY OF YOUR RELATIVES EXPERIENCE SOME OF
THESE MORE BIZARRE TESTS THAT WERE USED FOR DECADES BEFORE THAT TO
EXCLUDE BLACK PEOPLE FROM VOTING, LIKE, ‘HOW MANY BUBBLES ARE IN A
BAR OF SOAP?’ OR ‘HOW MANY JELLY BEANS ARE IN THE JAR?’

Oh, yes. I was born in ‘51. I grew up in a segregated neighborhood,
went to an all-Black high school, segregated high school, segregated
elementary school. I remember going to the dentist. And the dentist
office had two entrances, one for white, one for “colored,” and
going through the white side, they had air conditioning. They had
magazines. The “colored” side did not.

We had field trips to the courthouse, where the courthouse had white
and “colored” water fountains. And we had to sit in the balcony. I
remember a third grade field trip to the courthouse and we watched a
trial where a white lawyer was defending a Black man accused of some
crime. And he was saying, “This was a good Nigra” — N-I-G-R-A.

And so I grew up through it and I also remember my parents when the
Voting Rights Act was first passed, and they did have federal
registrars around, but all of the neighbors, my parents and everybody
not only did they go and register to vote, they voted in every
election, no matter what.

There were people telling us stories. Tim Winston owned a funeral home
here and he was one of the few Black people who was able to register
prior to the Voting Rights Act being passed, and he told stories of
how they were turning away Black folks by asking them ridiculous
questions. So, yeah, I remember, personally, stories of how hard it
was before the Voting Rights Act was passed and after it was passed.

IF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT SECTION TWO WERE TO BE KNOCKED OUT AND IT
WASN’T A TOOL YOU COULD USE ANYMORE, WHAT WOULD BE THE STRATEGY
AFTER THAT? WOULD THAT MEAN THERE’S NO OPTION FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
GROUPS? WHAT IS THE WORLD GOING TO LOOK LIKE IF THE VRA IS NOT
AVAILABLE FOR PRIVATE GROUPS TO LITIGATE?

It almost becomes an impossible hill to climb. You have to go back to
the 15th Amendment and prove intentional discrimination, which is
difficult, or the 14th Amendment and prove intentional discrimination,
which is difficult. All a legislative body has to do is say, “We
didn’t draw the district based on race. We drew them based on
partisanship, and they’re entitled to the presumption that there was
a good faith effort to do that, and it’s hard.” We had
overwhelming evidence in Texas that partisanship was not the real
reason. If that cannot overcome a presumption that the legislator was
acting in good faith, going forward, it’s going to be impossible to
prove a racial gerrymandering claim.

THE SUPREME COURT RULED IN 2019 THAT THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION PUTS NO
LIMITS ON PARTISAN GERRYMANDERING, EVEN AS THE JUSTICES CONTINUE TO
AGGRESSIVELY POLICE USE OF RACE IN REDISTRICTING. IS THAT LINE
MEANINGFUL?

Race and party, in Mississippi, there’s no distinction. It’s a
fiction.

_[xxxxxx MODERATOR - ALSO OF INTEREST: __CITIZENS UNITED 2.0 BY
VERONICA RICCOBENE_
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JACOBIN; __IS THE SUPREME COURT UNSURE ABOUT BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP?
BY AMY DAVIDSON SORKIN, THE NEW YORKER_
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_JOSH GERSTEIN is POLITICO’s Senior Legal Affairs Reporter._

_Gerstein covers the intersection of law and politics, including
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Donald
Trump and his associates, as well as ensuing counter-investigations
into the origins of the FBI’s initial inquiry into the Trump-Russia
saga._

_While not a lawyer, Gerstein’s spent more time in courtrooms and
more time reading legal pleadings than many members of the bar._

_For more than a decade, he has taken POLITICO readers inside the most
celebrated political trials of our era, involving figures like former
Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), former White House counsel Greg Craig,
longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone and former Trump campaign manager
Paul Manafort._

_Gerstein served as a contributor to MSNBC for several of those
trials. In addition, his reporting and legal analysis has been
featured in outlets such as National Public Radio, CNN, Fox News Al
Jazeera, the New York Times and the New Republic._

_Gerstein also reports on the Justice Department and legal
controversies, including Supreme Court showdowns over same-sex
marriage and Obamacare, all of the recent Supreme Court nominations,
criminal justice reform and battles over executive privilege._

_Evincing his lifelong interest in transparency and open government,
Gerstein is the author of a 1991 Massachusetts law requiring college
and university police departments to keep a public log of arrests and
reported crimes._

_He’s also an expert on the Freedom of Information Act and has
pursued several such cases, seeking details about alleged abuse of
detainees at Guantanamo and the government’s handling of leaks of
classified information._

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* Supreme Court
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* Voting Rights Act
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* redistricting
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* Mississippi
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* Gerrymandering
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* race
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* political parties
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