Its not 1965 Anymore

On Wednesday, April 27, 2026 the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the long-held interpretation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that permitted gerrymandering of voting districts based on race in order to assure that certain minority races (African Americans) were the majority in such districts. 

Reaction among the leftwing progressives, race-based community organizers and the left-of-center media was predictable. Former President Obama  said the decision, “effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, …and 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.” And Al Sharpton wailed that the decision was a “bullet in the heart of the voting rights movement.”

But the Voting Rights Act was passed by Congress “To enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” The fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (ratified in 1870) states, “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.”

Racial gerrymandering was concocted to insure an outcome that guaranteed minority representation in Congress but the process to create majority-minority districts is intended to give the vote of African-Americans greater weight than other Americans in order to insure that outcome. But the process is wrong and violates the intention of the Constitutional Amendments. In 1965, after many decades of Jim Crow laws limiting the rights of African-Americans and hundreds of years of slavery, such maneuvers to insure a socially desired outcome might be forgiven, but it is not 1965 anymore.

The demographics of America have changed dramatically in the sixty years since the Voting Rights Act. African Americans are no longer the largest minority in the country, Hispanic Americans are. Do we need dedicated voting districts for Hispanic Americans in addition to those for African Americans? And what about Americans of Asian descent. In 1965 their numbers were negligible but they now represent a substantial minority. And the census bureau is reporting that more and more Americans are reporting as mixed-race as barriers to interracial relationships have fallen. Classifying a person with both African and European heritage as African Americans (such as President Obama) is a holdover from the past It is part of the identity politics that divides America and it is time to move on. But we can’t move on without changes to the policies of past eras.

Further, the voting rights of African Americans are not being denied or abridged in any substantial way as they had been in 1965. Voting turnout for African Americans is as high or even higher than that of whites (or should I say European Americans?). Statistics show that African Americans enjoy the equal participation in our democracy that President Obama claimed the Court had abandoned. And protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach cannot be accomplished by giving certain minorities greater rights than the majority or other minorities.

The SCOTUS decision will be a major issue in the upcoming elections. Democrats will denounce the decision and assert that it is proof of a biased Court no matter how constitutionally sound the decision might be. They want a Court that adheres to their political agenda not the Constitution. They will frame the election as one that needs to break the Republican majority in the Senate in order to prevent any more Trump nominees.

Republicans will likely attempt to use the decision to redraw voting districts in favor of Republicans, the Court apparently okaying gerrymandering for partisan purposes but not for racial purposes. But this attempt will likely backfire on them just as the Republican gerrymander in Texas set off a wave of Democratic favored gerrymanders across the country.

The SCOTUS decision on racial gerrymandering blows the Democrats’ cover that while they may say that gerrymandering in general is bad, racial gerrymandering was supposedly necessary to overcome systemic racism in American politics. But the real reason is that Democrats assume that African-Americans vote as a block and that the block favors Democrats. The goal was not racial justice but partisan politics to favor Democrats. In 2024, Donald Trump made inroads to this supposed black solidarity as more and more African Americans vote on issues and not race, especially pocket book issues. This is a trend that is likely to continue

But there is another alternative to the partisan purposes both Republicans and Democrats desire. In order to accomplish the racial gerrymanders prior to the SCOTUS decision, the rest of the districts in a state also had to be gerrymandered as well to accommodate the race-based districts. It could not be avoided. But gerrymandering creates safe, uncompetitive voting districts which is why political parties love them. Unite America estimates that 85% of voting districts in the 2024 election were uncompetitive. Uncompetitive districts enhance the power of the primary elections where radical party bases outweigh moderate and independent voters, a principal cause of the great divisiveness we are currently experiencing.

Without the required racial gerrymanders it is now possible to create non-gerrymandered districts, or at least the most non-partisan districts possible. This could be done by using algorithms (possibly supported by artificial intelligence) to draw the districts. Elimination of racial gerrymandering supposedly required by the 1965 Voting Rights Act unblocks a barrier to election reform desperately needed right now in the United States.

Partisanship seems to be part of human nature. But so is self-interest. The Founders tried to limit the self-interested accumulation of power by the checks and balances they incorporated into the Constitution. We probably cannot eliminate partisanship as the political parties attempt to restructure the political system in their favor. But we can limit their impact. One way is to stop gerrymandering voting districts to favor partisanship and eliminating racial gerrymandering is a step in the right direction. American citizens and groups supporting civil discourse to reduce divisiveness such as Braver Angels (of which I am a member) should work hard to eliminate gerrymandering of all kinds to help get our country back on the right track.