In the hours after the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana congressional map and weakened protections given to minority voters under the Voting Rights Act, a bishop overseeing historically Black African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches in Louisiana wrote a message to her district.
By limiting how race can be used in drawing congressional districts, the court’s decision Wednesday—which fell along ideological lines—“strikes at one of the primary tools that has been used for decades to protect the political voice and voting strength of Black communities,” Erika Crawford said in an email titled “Remember. Resist. Respond.”
She recounted the church’s role in voting and civil rights history, from the rise of itinerant elder Hiram Rhodes Revels as the first Black US senator to marchers congregating in a Selma church on Bloody Sunday. To meet the moment, the church must remember its history, resist cynicism, and respond “not as partisans, but as people of conscience,” she wrote, encouraging people to organize, mobilize, and vote.
“This is not the end, it’s not over,” Crawford, who also oversees AME churches in Mississippi, told CT in an interview. “We cannot sit down, back up, or hide under the porch.”
Following the court’s ruling, other Black church leaders also said they will redouble efforts to educate and mobilize congregants, which predominantly Black churches often do during election seasons under slogans like “Souls to the Polls” and “COGIC Counts.”
How effective those efforts will be amid an expected surge in new redistricting efforts remains to be seen.
In sum, the decision by the court’s conservative majority this week makes it more difficult for Americans to challenge redistricting that they believe dilutes minority power and makes it harder for states to create majority-minority districts, which have been used for decades to boost minority representation in Congress.
The ruling will also call into question the legal viability of dozens of districts and could lead to less racial diversity in Congress.
On Wednesday, bishops from the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a 1.5-million-member denomination that is separate from the AME, met to discuss how to respond. Darin Moore, a North Carolina–based bishop with the AME Zion, told CT that leaders were “gravely disappointed, but not surprised” by the ruling. “We have to employ our anger and deploy our people so they can be educated about the issues and respond by bringing new energy—positive energy—into mobilizing people,” he said.
The Church of God in Christ (COGIC), the largest Pentecostal denomination in the US, struck a similar tone. In a statement released Thursday, J. Drew Sheard, COGIC’s presiding bishop, said the erosion of the Voting Rights Act was a “direct contradiction” of Scripture’s teaching to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves and to defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
He also urged federal lawmakers “to act with urgency to restore and strengthen voting rights protections” and called on faith leaders and congregations to mobilize “in defense of democracy.”
The case tied to the decision, Louisiana v. Callais, stems from a dispute about a congressional map that was redrawn in Louisiana following the 2020 census. Even though a third of Louisianans are Black, the map had only one majority-Black congressional district out of six allotted for the state. A group of Black voters sued, arguing state lawmakers had diluted minority votes in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which has outlawed race-based discrimination in voting since 1965.
Federal courts agreed and compelled Louisiana to draw a new map. State lawmakers then created a second Black-majority district. But a group who called themselves “non-African-American voters” sued over the newly drawn map, saying what Louisiana did amounted to racial gerrymandering. A three-judge federal court agreed, and the Supreme Court affirmed that ruling this week.
In the opinion for the conservative majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that section 2 of the Voting Rights Act applies when states “intentionally” draw districts that are racially discriminatory, not when they’re seeking a “partisan advantage” in their gerrymandering efforts. He added that additional considerations were not necessary because the country had made racial progress since the law was first implemented and that Black voters were now participating in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate.
The liberal justices issued a strong dissent, noting the courts have always acknowledged the ways in which racial identity and political preferences were often linked in America.
Writing for the minority, Justice Elena Kagan said Wednesday’s decision marked “the now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.” The majority’s new interpretation of the law will make it almost impossible to successfully challenge redistricting that dilutes minority voting power, particularly because proving discriminatory intent is “well-nigh impossible,” Kagan said.
Some observers have mixed feelings about the outcome. Chris Butler, a Chicago-based pastor who leads a predominately Black congregation, said the court’s decision could make it challenging for advocates who are trying to protect Black voting rights, particularly in the South. The ruling won’t push the United States toward a more just outcome, he said.
But after years of working in Chicago politics, Butler has also soured on gerrymandering and thinks it should be done away with entirely.
“The narrative that we are going back to 1965”—an idea similar to a statement by US Senator Raphael Warnock and others—“is not true,” said Butler, who also leads Christian civic formation at the Center for Christianity & Public Life and is a contributor to CT. “This is not a good decision, but that kind of hopeless language designed to stir up people’s fear and anger is unhelpful in the conversation.”
About three years ago, the Supreme Court sided with Black voters who argued a congressional map in Alabama diluted their political power. At that time, the court left the Voting Rights Act alone. But it has also made a series of other decisions to weaken the law.
The previous most prominent blow to the statute came in 2013, when the conservative majority struck down a provision of the law that required states with a history of discrimination in voting to seek approval from Washington before changing their election rules. In response, several states implemented restrictive voting laws that advocates say have made it more challenging to vote.
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