Last Term: Reproductive Rights. This Term: Voting Rights.

The justices aren’t done remaking American democracy.

By Michael Waldman, Brennan Center

In its first full term, which ended in June, the Supreme Court’s new conservative supermajority catered to key Republican interest groups: the NRA, abortion foes, and the fossil fuel industry. What’s up for this term, which starts on Monday? The raw issue of race in America — with possibly equally dire results.

Next week the justices will hear the first big case, which may lead to an effective final gutting of the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, the Court demolished the VRA’s preclearance requirements, which required states and localities with a history of racial discrimination to get permission from the Justice Department or a federal court to change voting practices. But Section 2 remained, which the Court said at the time was enough.

Then in Brnovich v. DNC in 2021, the Court made it much harder to use Section 2 to stop voter suppression.

Now the Supreme Court could be coming for what is left of Section 2 — and its use to block racial gerrymandering. Next week, the justices will hear a case out of Alabama. When the lawmakers there drew new congressional maps in 2021, they included only one district likely to elect a Black member of Congress, despite the fact that Black voters are more than a quarter of the electorate. Three federal judges, two of them named by Donald Trump, ruled that the map was racially discriminatory.