The Court’s Voting-Rights Decision Was Worse Than People Think

The Voting Rights Act regime as we knew it is gone, and it’s not coming back.

Once thought of as the crown jewel of the Second Reconstruction, the VRA has lost its luster. For the past decade or so, the Supreme Court has systematically reduced the scope and reach of the law. The Court’s decision last week in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee is only the latest case, and certainly will not be the last, to interpret the act in a manner that will sideline it—permanently.

The Democratic National Committee, along with other plaintiffs, challenged two Arizona voting laws that it argued discriminated against voters of color. One law required voters to cast their ballot in their assigned precinct or else their vote would not count. A second law prohibited third parties, such as voting-rights activists, from collecting mail-in ballots from voters who were unable or unwilling to submit those ballots themselves (though it expressly allowed caregivers and family members to do so). The plaintiffs argued that these laws violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, along with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Section 2 of the VRA prohibits the government from providing “less opportunity” for voters of color “to participate in the political process.” It protects voters from voting rules that are intended to or have the effect of discriminating on the basis of race.

[Read: American democracy is only 55 years old—and hanging by a thread]

was about Section 2 of the VRA and was the Court’s first opportunity to determine how to apply the section to claims alleging denial of the right to vote. The defendants argued that the laws did not violate Section