Black lawmakers decry supreme court voting decision: ‘We’re going backwards’ | US voting rights

Lawmakers representing Alabama’s two Black congressional districts, who were at risk of losing their seats after the high court effectively struck down the Voting Rights Act, said the decision sent the United States “backwards.”

Wednesday’s 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais weakens a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republicans to eliminate majority-minority congressional districts in the South, with Reps. Terri Sewell and Shomari Figures in the crosshairs.

“The people of my hometown fought, braved, died and marched for the right of all Americans to vote,” Sewell, who represents Alabama’s seventh congressional district, said shortly before Wednesday’s decision. “And I know I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the Voting Rights Act. I mean, actually, all Black elected officials. It’s pretty scary to think that we’re going backwards, not forwards, in our collective oversight.”

Those representing Alabama’s newly elected second congressional district said the decision threatens far more than the seats currently held by Black members of Congress. “It’s going to have a huge impact,” he said in an interview before the ruling, predicting the court would weaken the landmark voting law. “At the end of the day, the Voting Rights Act is about fairness. It’s about having the opportunity to elect the members of Congress you choose and not having district lines drawn in a way that impedes the ability of a significant racial group to influence the outcome of the election.”

In an ideologically divisive decision, the high court affirmed that Louisiana’s congressional maps violated the equal protection clause. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, argued that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which has been used for four decades to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps, does not require states to draw majority-minority districts. In a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the decision effectively guts the law.

‘All we want is fair representation’

The implications for Alabama are immediate and deeply personal for both Sewell and Figures. Republican lawmakers in Alabama will likely move quickly to redraw the state’s congressional maps, but not soon enough to impact the 2026 midterm elections, Sewell said. The state’s deadline to become a major-party candidate for the May 19 primary was January, meaning it was likely too late for Republicans to change the maps before the upcoming election. Sewell and Figures may be safe in November, but Republicans will likely redraw their districts in 2028 and remove them from Congress.

Sewell, who represents the state’s Black Belt region, including the city where he grew up, Selma, has served in Congress since 2011. For 13 of those years, he was the only Democrat in Alabama’s congressional delegation and the only representative from a district where Black voters could elect the candidate of their choice. His district, which runs through some of the nation’s poorest counties, was a product of the Voting Rights Act, which was reformed to give Black Alabamians, who make up about 28% of the state’s population, a voice in federal representation.

The second newly drawn district, the Figures district, exists only because of a recent legal victory. The seat was created after the high court ruled in 2023 in Allen v Milligan that Alabama’s congressional map illegally diluted Black voting power. This decision reaffirmed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and forced Alabama to elect a second opportunity district. Figures, a first-term congressman from Mobile, won the seat in 2024 in what Sewell called a historic moment: For the first time in modern Alabama history, two Black representatives sat together in the congressional delegation.

“It was a long time coming,” Sewell said of that day. “When you think about representation, all we want is fair representation.”

Wednesday’s decision puts that representation directly at risk. But Sewell and Figures were clear that the threat extends far beyond Congress. With the weakening of the Voting Rights Act, representation at all levels, including state legislatures, county commissions, city councils and school boards, is threatened, Sewell said.

“When we return to a day when majority-white counties can now only hold general elections,” Sewell warned, “we will not have Black county commissioners or Black city council members. The meaning of Callais goes far beyond congressional representation.”

Both MPs are already preparing to fight. Sewell said he plans to work with stakeholders to strengthen the John R Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and uphold federal voting protections weakened by the court’s previous decision in Shelby County v Holder. “We discovered that [Voting Rights Act]”That’s why we will pass another law,” he said.

“You better believe we will challenge the map they created,” he added. “This isn’t over yet.”

The fight will also require a return to grassroots organizing, drawing on a history Alabama knows intimately, the figures said. “The civil rights movement came with an insurance plan,” he said. “It was called the right to vote. It didn’t come with an additional insurance plan to protect the right and choose not to exercise it.”

For Sewell, who marched with the late civil rights activist and former U.S. congressman John Lewis and grew up in the church where the foot soldiers of Bloody Sunday gathered before crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, this moment requires the same determination that made Selma possible.

“I think of John Lewis, the frail, frail man who contracted cancer on that bridge for the last time in 2019,” he said. “They had to hold him up, but his voice was strong: ‘Never give up. Never give up. Keep the faith and keep our eyes on the prize.’ That’s what’s energizing me right now.”