The 60-year project to kill it

The Voting Rights Act didn’t die on April 29, 2026. It was killed over six decades through patient, deliberate legal work. Here’s the full arc — and the AFRO at every turn.

By Portia Wood
Special to the AFRO

The opponents started before the ink was dry.

South Carolina v. Katzenbach was filed in 1966 — the year after the Voting Rights Act (VRA) became law. South Carolina asked the Supreme Court to strike down Section 5’s preclearance requirement as an unconstitutional intrusion on state sovereignty. The Court held 8-1 that Congress had the power to do exactly what the VRA did, and that the documented record of disenfranchisement — overwhelming and undeniable — justified it. The opponents noted the one dissent, regrouped, and started building the argument they would eventually win.

That argument took 60 years. It worked.

2013: Shelby County v. Holder — Section 5 Is Dead

In 2013, Shelby County, Ala., sued Attorney General Eric Holder, arguing that Section 4(b) — the formula determining which jurisdictions had to seek preclearance — was unconstitutional because it relied on decades-old data. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the 5-4 majority, agreed. He didn’t strike down Section 5 directly. He killed the formula that activated it, which produced the same result. His reasoning: covered states had made progress since 1965, and progress made the old coverage formula obsolete.

Justice Ginsburg’s dissent cut straight through it. She compared the majority’s logic to throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you aren’t getting wet. The protections were working precisely because they were in place. Removing them was not a recognition of progress — it was an invitation.

The invitation was accepted within 24 hours. Texas announced it would implement a voter ID law that had been blocked under preclearance. Within a year, states previously required to clear voting changes with the federal government had passed restrictions on early voting, closed polling places in Black neighborhoods, implemented strict ID requirements, and redrawn maps — all of which had been flagged or rejected under the process that no longer existed.

The AFRO covered every development. Its publisher, Frances Murphy Toni Draper, wrote in October 2025 about what the years after Shelby County looked like: “Restrictive changes followed almost overnight. We remember the old tricks — from poll taxes and literacy tests to how many jelly beans are in the jar — and we recognize their modern echoes today.”

2021: Brnovich — Section 2 starts to buckle

With Section 5 dead, Section 2 became the last significant line of defense. In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), the Supreme Court reviewed two Arizona voting restrictions — one discarding ballots cast in the wrong precinct, another banning third-party collection of mail ballots, a practice heavily used in Native American and Latino communities where mail service is unreliable. Justice Alito, writing for the 6-3 majority, upheld both and in the process introduced a set of non-textual factors for evaluating Section 2 claims that tilted the legal analysis sharply against challengers. Winning a Section 2 case became substantially harder overnight.

Legal scholars flagged the implications immediately. The AFRO covered it. The opponents moved to the next case.

2024: Alexander — the burden becomes almost impossible

In Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP (2024), the Court reversed a lower court’s finding of racial gerrymandering in South Carolina. Justice Alito again wrote the majority. The key move: if a state could produce any plausible partisan justification for a map, the racial discrimination claim failed — even when the statistical evidence of racial targeting was overwhelming. Partisan gerrymandering is legal under federal law. Racial gerrymandering is not. But if you label racial gerrymandering as partisan, you’re protected. The legal architecture for Callais was now complete.

2026: Callais — the last tool is gone

Louisiana v. Callais was the final step. The majority held that compliance with Section 2 cannot justify race-conscious redistricting under the 15th Amendment. The tool that was designed to fight discriminatory maps is now legally incompatible with using it. The ASALH said it plainly in its statement published by the AFRO on April 30, 2026: “This was a 60-year fight to dismantle, disintegrate, and decimate the Act that was put in place to protect our voting rights.”

As the Campaign Legal Center put it: “… the Court has made it clear that racial discrimination will be allowed so long as it is done under the guise of partisanship.”

Each ruling in this arc was dressed in the neutral language of constitutional interpretation. Each one removed a tool from the hands of the people being discriminated against and extended protection to those doing the discriminating. 

Katzenbach to Shelby County to Brnovich to Alexander to Callais. The line is straight. 

This is not judicial drift. It is a project.

The AFRO kept the record at every stage

Here is what matters about that: the AFRO was present at every stage of this fight. It covered the VRA’s passage in 1965. It covered Shelby County in 2013. It covered Brnovich in 2021. Its publisher wrote a warning editorial before Callais was even decided. And when the ruling dropped on April 29, 2026, the AFRO had coverage up the same day — the news analysis, the ASALH statement, the legal community’s response, all of it.

That is not an accident of institutional longevity. That is the point. The AFRO was built to keep this record, because its founder, John H. Murphy Sr., understood in 1892 that Black communities need a press that is paying attention to the things that affect them, even when — especially when — no one else is.

“Black people wouldn’t believe what was going on unless they read it in one of their own papers,” Carl Murphy said. That has been true since 1892. It is still true today.

Next: What’s left, and what we actually do with it.

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The AFRO covered Bloody Sunday. It covered Shelby County. It covered Callais. That institutional continuity — 134 years of it — is one of the most important assets Black America has right now. Support the paper that has kept this record. Subscribe, donate, and share at afro.com/donate.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.

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