Trump's conservative-packed Supreme Court dealt
a horrific, potentially fatal blow to the key law that has protected the voting rights of minorities in the United States for decades.
Sign the petition to protect voting rights in the United States!Established at the height of the civil rights movement in 1965, the Voting Rights Act has been "the primary tool against discriminatory voting rights policies from states hostile to voters of color" for over 60 years.
Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, states have been able to keep things fair by using census data on race to make voting maps. This has historically protected "the voting power of minorities" by making sure that Black votes do not get swallowed up and lost within heavily white districts.
But now, in a case called
Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court ruled that taking into account race data for drawing voting maps was unconstitutional.
The court wrongfully claims that this will somehow make voting districts more fair by adopting a colorblind approach.But we know that all
"colorblindness" does is allow for the continuation of systems that have silenced, suppressed, and counted out minority voices for centuries. With this gutting of Section 2, states can now openly redraw districts to drown out Black voices. And as long as they don't
admit that what they're doing is racially motivated, there's little we'll be able to do about it.
That's why we need every state to act as quickly as possible and adopt their own Voting Rights Acts at the state level to protect the votes of Black and minority voters! Sign the petition if you agree!After the
Louisiana v. Callais decision, what we feared most happened:
southern states jumped into action to redraw voting maps to eliminate majority Black-majority districts. With midterm elections coming up in November, this is a democratic emergency.
Let us be abundantly clear: if we allow the rights of Black Americans to be erased this egregiously,
everyone loses. This is part of a larger plan to keep power in the hands of the already powerful and strip rights and power from minorities, the lower and middle classes, labor movements, and those who benefit from robust public services. This is an assault on the democracy we all share, and we must treat it as such.
There are already 10 states that knew this was coming and took action already, establishing a
State Voting Rights Act (SVRA) of their own in order to protect local voters.
We need the other 40 states to pass their own SVRA, as well as the 10 states with established laws to strengthen them to
make sure that by November, Black voters can be sure that their votes will truly count.We cannot go backwards.Sign the petition demanding every state pass a SVRA to protect the voices of Black and minority voters ahead of November's midterms!