The 60-Year Project to Kill It

May 13, 2026

The article traces a 60-year legal campaign to dismantle the Voting Rights Act (VRA) through five key Supreme Court cases from 1966 to 2026. While South Carolina v. Katzenbach initially upheld the VRA in 1966, subsequent rulings systematically weakened its protections: Shelby County (2013) eliminated preclearance requirements, Brnovich (2021) made discrimination challenges harder to win, Alexander (2024) allowed racial gerrymandering disguised as partisan redistricting, and Callais (2026) made race-conscious redistricting legally incompatible with VRA compliance.

Who is affected

Black voters and Black communities
Native American communities
Latino communities (particularly those with unreliable mail service)
Voters in previously covered jurisdictions under Section 5 (including Texas, Alabama, South Carolina, and Louisiana)
The NAACP (specifically the South Carolina State Conference)
The AFRO newspaper and its readership
Attorney General Eric Holder (named defendant in Shelby County case)
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)
Campaign Legal Center

What action is being taken

The article describes actions already completed rather than ongoing actions. After the 2013 Shelby County decision, Texas announced implementation of a voter ID law and states passed various voting restrictions, but these are described as past events. No explicitly ongoing actions are detailed in the article beyond the AFRO's continued coverage role.

Why it matters

This matters because the systematic dismantling of the Voting Rights Act removes legal protections against voter discrimination that took decades to establish. The rulings have practical consequences: states can now implement restrictive voting laws without federal preclearance, discrimination claims have become substantially harder to prove in court, and racial gerrymandering can be disguised as legal partisan redistricting. The decisions effectively legalize racial discrimination in voting as long as it's labeled as partisan strategy, reversing protections enacted in response to documented historical disenfranchisement. The article emphasizes that having independent Black media document this process is crucial because mainstream institutions may not adequately cover issues affecting Black communities.

What's next

The article explicitly states "Next: What's left, and what we actually do with it" as a teaser for a follow-up piece, but no specific next steps are detailed in this article itself regarding legal challenges, legislative responses, or community actions.

Read full article from source: The San Diego Voice & Viewpoint