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The Voting Rights Act is dead. Long live the Voting Rights Act.
After my NFL career, I became a voting rights lawyer because of a line in a Supreme Court case that said the right to vote is “preservative of all other rights.”
That line stayed with me, because it said something simple and profound: If you can vote, you can protect yourself. If you can’t, you are defenseless. You can be taken advantage of. Your voice is silenced, and your community can be ignored.
That conviction led me to the Obama administration, to Congress, to helping draft the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and to this moment where everything we built is under direct assault.
A Century in the Making
The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870 with plain and unambiguous language in its first section: “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.”
For nearly a century, that promise was broken every day across the South through literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, jelly beans counted in jars, soap bubbles guessed on a bar of soap, and the ever-present threat of violence.
Then came 1965 and President Lyndon Baines Johnson. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is rightly called the crown jewel of the Civil Rights movement, and it made our multiracial democracy not just possible, but real.
It made the Congressional Black Caucus possible. It made Barack Obama’s presidency possible. And it made my own election to Congress from a district that had never before sent an African American to Washington possible.
The Voting Rights Act is now dead. It was dismantled in three blows.
The first blow came in 2013. In Shelby County v. Holder, Chief Justice Roberts and the Court’s conservatives gutted Section 5, the preclearance provision requiring states with a history of discrimination to get federal approval before changing voting laws. Within hours, those states began passing suppression laws. The “shield” of the VRA was gone.
The second blow was in 2021. In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Court weakened Section 2’s disparate-impact protections, making it nearly impossible to successfully challenge voting restrictions, no matter how discriminatory their impact on minority voters.
The third and fatal blow came just this past week. On April 29, 2026, in Louisiana v. Callais, the Court, in a 6-3 ruling, effectively eviscerated the rest of Section 2 as applied to redistricting by requiring a showing of intent to discriminate and in the process giving the greenlight to states and municipalities to start drawing out minority representation at every level of government.
Justice Kagan said it plainly in dissent: Section 2 is now “all but a dead letter.” She was right. With the “shield” of Section 5 gone and now the “sword” of Section 2 gone, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as a functioning instrument of democracy, is dead.
We Have Been Here Before
It has been said that history doesn’t always repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Black people in this country have seen this story before. In 1870, Joseph Rainey became the first elected Black U.S. Representative. The South Carolinian was the first of 14 Black representatives who would serve during the Reconstruction era, alongside two Black Senators.
But when Reconstruction was ended in a corrupt deal to let Republican Rutherford B. Hayes take the White House in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, Black political power in the South vanished. Black voters were terrorized and erased from the political map. When George Henry White of North Carolina, the last Black congressman from the South, left office in 1901, he gave a prophetic line to history saying: “This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the Negroes’ temporary farewell to the American Congress; but let me say, phoenixlike, he will rise up some day and come again.”
He was right, but it likely took longer than even he could have envisaged. No Black person would represent any Southern state in Congress for the next 72 years, until the Voting Rights Act made it possible again. We will not wait another 72 years.
The impact of this ruling is already here. The day after Callais, Louisiana moved to redraw its maps. Tennessee and Alabama followed within days. Texas, which had moved first, is now unchallenged in what it did.
Here in Texas, Black voting power has already been gutted. In North Texas, we have gone from having three Black U.S. Representatives when I left office in January 2025 to one guaranteed, and potentially one more if I am successful in my runoff election. In Houston, Barbara Jordan’s old seat was merged with another Black district, cutting a city with one of the nation’s largest Black populations from two majority-Black districts down to just one, beginning next year. Texas has the largest Black population of any state, and it will have two, potentially three Black U.S. Representatives out of a delegation of 38.
Experts warn that up to a quarter of the Congressional Black Caucus could be affected by map changes that would previously have triggered Section 2 scrutiny. They are not just drawing lines. They are deciding whose votes count and whose don’t – under the cover of “partisan” gerrymandering, which is racial gerrymandering with a new name.
If we do nothing, we will see the greatest reduction in Black political power in the South since the end of Reconstruction. That is not hyperbole. That is history repeating itself.
This is not a coincidence. This was the plan.
Three Things We Must Do
We are not going back. Not to the back of the bus. Not to counting jelly beans in a jar. Not to 72 years of political exile. I have a plan.
1) Pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
I helped draft and pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act out of the House, and I know what it took. John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge so that the right to vote would never again be denied. This bill will restore the promise of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 while also updating it to deal with the new issues and areas of voter suppression that have arisen since its passage. It is designed to withstand even this Supreme Court, and it must be the first priority of the Democratic Party going forward.
That is not a demand. That is an inheritance. And living up to it is how we honor every person who marched, every person who bled, and every person who never stopped believing that this country could be made more just.
2) Reform the Supreme Court.
For most of my career I resisted this conclusion. But two stolen seats and a court engaged in what Justice Kagan called the “now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act” have pushed me past reluctance. Expand the court. Institute 18-year term limits. Pass a binding judicial code of ethics.
This court has sacrificed its legitimacy. We must respond accordingly.
3) Rebuild our political power from the ground up.
The maps being redrawn are based on estimated voter turnout. We can change those estimates. We must drive turnout in Black and brown communities to levels that make even the most gerrymandered maps insufficient to silence us.
But that requires a Democratic Party that earns trust, not one that trades stocks, takes corporate PAC money, and wonders why voters stay home. I don’t do either.
The party must offer working people something real: concrete gains, clean hands, and showing up every day, not just at election time.
The King Is Dead. Long Live the King.
Joseph Rainey looked out from the floor of the United States House of Representatives and demanded equal protection under the law. He was threatened with death for it. He did it anyway.
George Henry White said the Negro would rise “phoenixlike” and come again. He was right. It just took 72 years. We will not wait 72 years.
If you ever wondered what you would have done during the civil rights movement or Reconstruction, now you have your answer.
This is that moment.
Pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Reform the Supreme Court. Rebuild our political power.
We are not going back. We are going to fight, and when we fight, we win. We will not wait another century. The arc of history is long, and WE are going to bend it back toward justice.
👋🏾 Before you leave, please read this important message.

Colin Allred is running in Texas’ 33rd Congressional District to fight for the community that raised him. He’s a former civil rights lawyer, NFL linebacker, and Congressman who’s working to return to Washington this November.

Unlike his opponent, he doesn’t take any corporate PAC donations, so he’s truly relying on grassroots support from people like you to help him win his runoff election in just 3 weeks.

If you want to elect a bold champion for working families and help flip the House blue, will you chip in $25 to Colin’s campaign today? [ [link removed] ]
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