Former Vice President Kamala Harris criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling in which a race-based redistricting map in Louisiana was struck down, stating that the ruling “guts the Voting Rights Act.”
In a post on X, Harris expressed that the ruling was “an outrage,” and added that it was “part of an agenda that conservatives set in place decades ago to steal power from everyday people.” Harris also stated that the “court’s decision is motivated by politics and designed to give an upper hand” to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling guts the Voting Rights Act and turns back the block on the foundational promise of equality and fairness in our election systems,” Harris wrote. “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was one of the last remaining protections for Black and brown voters against maps deliberately drawn to dilute their political power. That protection has been stripped away.”
Breitbart News’s Katherine Hamilton reported that in a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court found that the map was “an unconstitutional gerrymander”:
The conservative majority ruled 6-3 that the map “is an unconstitutional gerrymander,” but stopped short of scrapping Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
“Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to enforce the Constitution — not collide with it. Unfortunately, lower courts have sometimes applied this Court’s §2 precedents in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids,” Justice Alito wrote for the majority.
Former President Barack Obama also responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling, claiming that the decision “effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act,” and allows “state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities.”
“It serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach,” Obama said.