What comes next after the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act? A conversation with Ari Berman

In the wake of the recent Louisiana v. Callais decision, the Supreme Court ruling that gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Southern state lawmakers moved quickly to redraw district lines and strengthen Republican advantages. Without the core protections of the VRA, Black voters across the South are witnessing the erosion of political representation and electoral influence, further enabling entrenched political interests to outweigh the will of the people.

Facing South recently spoke with voting rights reporter and author Ari Berman about the impact of the court's decision and how it is reshaping American democracy ahead of a series of consequential elections. As the national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones and a reporting fellow at Type Media Center, Berman has covered voting rights and democracy for more than a decade. He is also the author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America  and Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You have been covering the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act for years now. What was your initial reaction to the ruling in Louisiana v. Callais?

Well, it was devastating for democracy because it really represented the final blow against the Voting Rights Act. It wasn't the first decision attacking the Voting Rights Act. In many ways, it was the last decision attacking the Voting Rights Act because voting rights had already been weakened so badly by the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, by the 2021 Brnovich decision. There was not much left to begin with. The most powerful tool left of the VRA was the fact that it protected minority representation.

And they basically took away that tool as well, and have given a green light to states to eliminate Black representation, particularly in the South. And the Supreme Court has sent a very strong signal that not only are they not going to stop this, but they're going to do everything they can to incentivize states in the South controlled by Republicans to try to dismantle these districts. So it's really hard to see what's left of the Voting Rights Act. And I think it's really sad for American democracy because I believe that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 made America a truly multiracial democracy for the first time. And without a functional Voting Rights Act, I believe that democracy writ large is going to suffer.

 You noted that the Callais opinion is the latest in a long line of cases attacking the Voting Rights Act. Can you talk about the significance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the legal and political actions that have led to its gradual dismantling?

[The Voting Rights Act] ended the Jim Crow regime in the South. It ended a situation when there were poll taxes and literacy tests and grandfather clauses and so many things that had disenfranchised Black voters for so many years in the Jim Crow South. It really did what it was supposed to do. It got rid of those literacy tests and poll taxes. It led to African Americans being registered to vote in the South, in huge numbers for the first time since the end of Reconstruction. And then, over a much longer period of time, it led to a real change in representation where you could have the first Black members of Congress, where you could have the first Black president, where you could have multiracial coalitions, where you had white politicians who weren't just segregationists, who could appeal to people's better angels as opposed to just playing the worst form of the race card.

It brought so many new people into the political process. It was initially targeted at ending the disenfranchisement of Black Americans in the Jim Crow South. It did that, but it also helped a much broader range of people. It helped Latinos and Asian Americans and Native Americans and other communities that had been historically disenfranchised. It really was transformational. And it had an incredibly robust bipartisan coalition behind it. What people don't often realize is that the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized four times by the Congress. And every time it was reauthorized, it was reauthorized by overwhelming margins. All four reauthorizations were signed by Republican presidents. 

And really the only difference is that this current Supreme Court has made it its mission to destroy [the VRA]. And it's doing so at a time when the Republican Party has made voter suppression its central organizing principle, and where Trump has made it harder to vote and is trying to manipulate elections to his own benefit. I think that what the Roberts Court has done flies in the face of not just American history, not just what the law did, but also the fact that there was such a strong bipartisan coalition behind it for so many years.

How do you view the current condition of the judiciary in the wake of this ruling from the Roberts Court, which many critics view as anti-democratic and highly hypocritical?

I view the court as extremely radical and extremely partisan. I believe we have a court that is determined to roll back the accomplishments of the 1960s civil rights movement, but is going even further now and really overthrowing or undoing the Reconstruction amendments altogether and not just making the Voting Rights Act a dead letter, but really making the 14th and the 15 Amendments meaningless. Then for the political dimension of what they're doing, they are putting their thumb on the scale to help Trump and the Republican Party. And I think a lot of people think, okay, well, this is a conservative court. They've been nominated by Republican presidents, they're going to do some conservative things. But there's a difference between doing conservative things and doing outright partisan things. And time and time again, they have put their thumb on the scale to benefit the Republican Party. 

First, they issued the Callais decision in April instead of June to give Republican-controlled states enough time to redraw districts ahead of the midterms, even though they've said repeatedly that courts shouldn't interfere in elections. Then they have rushed decisions, in the case of Louisiana, for example, to allow Republicans to do things like suspend elections so that they can eliminate districts and basically throw out people's votes so they can target Black representation. In the case of Alabama, they repeatedly put in place a law that had been blocked by the federal courts for intentionally discriminating against black voters. 

And time and time again, they disregard their own precedents. They say, you shouldn't change voting laws in the middle of the election. Then they allow Republican-controlled states to change voting laws in the middle of the election to disenfranchise Black voters and to target Democratic officials. They say, we are not changing the Voting Rights Act, we're just updating it, but they've completely eviscerated the Voting Rights Act. They say you can still sue for intentional discrimination under the Voting Rights Act. Then a lower court finds intentional discrimination in Alabama and they said, okay, well, that's not enough. Basically, it feels like no change, no matter how drastic, passed by a Republican-controlled state would ever be blocked by the Supreme Court, and no violation of the Voting Rights Act, no matter how extreme, would ever be found to be unconstitutional by this court. And I believe that's a really big shift, even in terms of what the Roberts Court was doing just a few years ago.

In your recent article for Mother Jones, you wrote that this decision "will be devastating for communities of color and the candidates they support." Can you explain the impact this ruling will have on Black representation and voting power in the South?

Well, I think we are sadly heading towards an era in which there could be no Black members of Congress from the South. Some of that we're already seeing in the wake of the decision. For example, Tennessee eliminated the only district in which black voters could elect their candidate of choice. They never would have been able to dismantle a district that was 63% Black before Louisiana v. Callais. Alabama has already eliminated one majority Black district. Louisiana has already eliminated one majority Black district. I think there's every expectation that with more time, more states will try to do this. Some states were not able to do this because of timing reasons, so they're going to try in 2028 if they didn't do it in 2026 or 2027. You heard Mississippi saying they're going to try to oust Benny Thompson, the only Democrat, the only Black member of Congress from Mississippi. South Carolina is going to try again to oust Jim Clyburn. Georgia is going to redraw its maps to try to eliminate multiple majority-minority districts. North Carolina, which has already targeted a black member of Congress, Don Davis, could try to go further.

You're going to potentially have a situation in which the area of the country with the longest and darkest history of discrimination, in which 60% of African Americans currently live, could have no Black representation in Congress. That's exactly what happened in Jim Crow, where you had huge populations, and they were unable to vote. The difference is now they can vote, but they don't have a meaningful vote anymore. It's a different story. In Jim Crow you couldn't vote altogether, right? In Mississippi, for example, only 6% of African Americans were registered to vote. Now you can register. You can theoretically cast a ballot, even though it's harder to vote in some of these states. But who are you going to vote for?

And then you have Trump putting pressure on these states. It used to be, you're a Republican-controlled state, you're going to have a majority-Republican delegation, or vice versa. You're a Democratic state, you're going to have a majority Democratic delegation. But there was still an understanding that there are still districts that might be more liberal or might have a different political persuasion. Now, if you're a Republican state, all your representatives have to be Republican. We're getting towards a place where Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia are going to say flat out, we don't want any Democrats in Congress. And the way they're going to accomplish that is by targeting Black voters, because Black voters continue to be the strongest supporters of the Democratic Party.

What impact will this have on future elections?

Well first off, just the political implications. Between the destruction of the Voting Rights Act and mid-decade redistricting that was done largely by Republicans, Republicans are 10 seats ahead in the race for the U.S. House right now. If there wasn't this mid-decade redistricting, there would be no question whatsoever that Republicans would lose the House, and the only question would be how many seats would they lose it by? Well, now Democrats have to win 11 seats or more just to take back the House. So that is fundamentally unfair. Then there's the character of representation. It's not like you just erased every Black voter in the South. They're still there, but they are not represented anymore. They will no longer have someone in Congress that looks out for their interests. And so there will no longer be representative democracy in parts of the South. 

I mean, who's gonna represent the people of Memphis right now? Do you think that whoever is elected from that district, which used to be the center of Memphis and its suburbs and now stretches 200 miles into rural areas, including into counties that were the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, do you think the people elected there are going to care about the Black residents of Memphis? I find it very hard to believe that that's going to be the case. And then you just have the fact that voting is so racially polarized in the South that the sad fact is, outside of certain places, (North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia), in the Deep South, white people will not vote for Black candidates, especially Black Democrats. That's just a fact. In Louisiana, in Mississippi, in Alabama, they have never elected a Black representative outside a majority-Black district. That's not the case everywhere: There are plenty of members from the Congressional Black Caucus that represent non-majority minority districts, in places like Colorado or places like Illinois, where voting is less racially-polarized. But the fact is that voting is incredibly racially polarized in the South. 

And one of the things that was so crazy to me about the latest decision in Alabama was the majority opinion basically said, if someone from one race supports one candidate, and someone from another race supports another candidate, that's not evidence of racially-polarized voting. Well, how else do you measure racially-polarized voting? For all the talk about the progress that has been made in the South, outside of those few more northern Southern states, outside of North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia, you really have a situation in which white people have changed very little in terms of their voting habits from the Jim Crow era to today.

Earlier, you mentioned the Shelby v. Holder decision and how we've seen growing efforts to suppress voting power, particularly in the South. You've also argued that many of these policies and rulings help preserve political power for a narrow group of people. Can you talk more about that and what you think it means for American democracy?

My thesis is that we are heading towards a majority-minority future in which white people will no longer be the majority in the country. And you have a shrinking conservative white minority already that is trying to do everything they can in spite of the fact that their population is decreasing and the fact that their support is decreasing as well. You look at the composition of this current Supreme Court. Five of the six conservative judges were appointed by Republican presidents who initially lost the popular vote and were confirmed by senators representing a minority of Americans. They are then undermining democracy to do things that go directly against the democratic process and things that are supported by a majority of Americans.

The Voting Rights Act is supported by a strong majority of Americans. It always has been. You don't get a Voting Rights Act in the first place without it having majority support. That was really what the Civil Rights Movement was all about. It was about winning a majority in Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act. That was a strategy to get the Voting Rights Act passed. That's what all the protests were about. The goal of course was equal dignity, equal representation, equal treatment under the law. But the way to pass it, they knew they needed to get a majority of Americans and a majority of the Congress and ultimately the president of the United States on their side.

And they did that. And now you have the opposite strategy, which is that instead of trying to appeal to a majority of Americans, you're trying to manipulate the system so that even though Trump is at record low approval ratings, you still have to win the House by 10 extra seats to take it back. You have a fact that the Supreme Court is reflective of two institutions, the U.S. Senate and the president of the United States, that aren't elected in ways that reflect one person, one vote. And so, our democratic system is not actually very democratic.

But it's even more concerning to me that those undemocratic institutions are making the country functionally much less democratic through their actions. And so, I think we're really reaching a breaking point where people are going to ask themselves, what kind of country do we live in? What kind of democracy do we live in? And if we can't express ourselves through the normal political channels, or we have institutions that don't respect fundamental principles of democracy, what do we do about it?

In light of this decision, what actions or policy reforms are needed to not only protect democracy but expand democracy so it really reflects the diversity of this country going forward?

Well, first off, I think we need a new civil rights movement, particularly focused on the South, to really put pressure on the states that are eliminating these districts and that are disenfranchising people, and to really raise this as a national issue. And I think North Carolina’s an example of how you do that through the Moral Monday movement. We need to build new coalitions that are multiracial, multi-generational. In a lot of these states — in Mississippi, in Alabama, and Louisiana — things are kind of hanging by a thread right now. And there hasn't been a whole lot of investment and there hasn't been a whole lot of attention. These places were thought to be so red that people just kind of wrote them off. And so, I believe that people need to invest more in these places. And I believe that we are seeing in the wake of this decision a lot more activism and a lot more engagement. But I believe we need to see more of that. And I believe we need to see people speaking out who are not from the South.

Second, I believe that reforming the Supreme Court needs to be the number one solution to this problem. I don't think that you can talk about passing a new Voting Rights Act or passing voting rights legislation without a strategy to reform the Supreme Court. Because if you passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Act tomorrow, I believe the Supreme Court would just strike it down. And so that's to me why reforming the court has to be the number one priority.

A lot of people don't know about the radicalism of the Supreme Court, or don't know what the solution is to the radicalism of the Supreme Court. And a lot of Democrats were until recently afraid to touch this issue. The Roberts court is just daring anyone to do something about it. They feel completely unrestrained in terms of how they're operating. They are not just issuing decisions that are truly undemocratic, that take the country back quite literally 150 years or more, but they're doing it in such a way that's so blatantly partisan, so blatantly on behalf of one party over the other, that I think that is the breaking point. And I don't think most people believe that that's how justices, particularly the most powerful justices in the country, should behave. And so, I think we need to make a much more robust case for Supreme Court reform.