In Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court dealt the Voting Rights Act, the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement, its third and gravest blow. The Roberts Court has made it practically impossible to enforce the landmark law’s prohibition on racial discrimination in redistricting and other election practices. It has blessed racially discriminatory districts so long as lawmakers claim that their goals are partisan. And in doing so, it has incentivized aggressive gerrymandering and the targeting of the electoral power of communities of color.
Congress must respond. It has the power to do so. The Constitution expressly grants Congress the principal role in regulating federal elections and remedying racial discrimination. The Constitution’s Elections Clause empowers Congress to “make or alter” rules regulating federal elections, overriding state laws and procedures. This power is extremely broad, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed. The enforcement clauses of the 14th and 15th Amendments likewise empower Congress to pass laws enforcing equal voting rights. And the Constitution also empowers Congress to respond to Supreme Court overreach; Article III of the Constitution, coupled with Congress’s authority to pass laws “necessary and proper” to carry out government powers, grants Congress significant control over the structure and operations of the federal judiciary, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
Callais is a historic setback. The Roberts Court overruled not only the work of bipartisan majorities in Congress but also that of countless Americans who marched, bled, and even died to deliver on the Constitution’s promise of equal voting rights and representation.
The decision, which flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s usual rule that courts should not issue rulings that impact ongoing elections, is already wreaking havoc on the country. It has supercharged the nationwide gerrymandering war and prompted legislatures across the South to target minority representation. Within hours of the decision, Florida passed a new congressional map that dilutes Black and Hispanic voting power. Within days, Louisiana and Tennessee halted ongoing elections to redraw their maps to undercut Black representation. Alabama is trying to reverse a map that was put in place just two years ago to remedy intentional discrimination. Other states appear poised to follow suit. Localities such as Jacksonville, North Carolina, are now trying to reimpose old electoral schemes that had shut out voters of color. If the resulting power grabs succeed, it could result in significant rollbacks in minority representation, bleaching federal, state, and local legislatures and other elected bodies nationwide. The United States could witness the biggest contraction in Black political representation since the post-Reconstruction backlash.
Callais is the Roberts Court’s third decision eroding the Voting Rights Act. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court gutted the law’s preclearance requirement, which had prevented states and localities with a history of discrimination from implementing discriminatory rules. In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), the Court made it all but impossible to use the act to block vote suppression tactics. These rulings led to a wave of suppressive laws, a surge in gerrymandering, and a growing gap in participation rates between white and nonwhite voters across the country. Now Callais takes that destruction to a new level.
While the Roberts Court has imposed some constraints, Congress still has broad authority to undo much of the damage from Callais and related cases. Four years ago, Congress came close to passing two pieces of transformative legislation that would have gone a long way toward solving many of the problems the Court exacerbated: the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Those bills are still critical and should be strengthened, adjusted, and adopted. Below are three crucial solutions that Congress should adopt immediately. They are not comprehensive; the Brennan Center is also working with civil rights allies on a broader legislative plan. But they would make a big difference in mitigating the harm wrought by Callais.
Ban Partisan Gerrymandering
Congress should immediately ban partisan gerrymandering and mid-decade redistricting. This would apply in red and blue states alike.
The United States is currently experiencing a gerrymandering crisis with no end in sight. The latest redistricting war began in the summer of 2025, when Texas redrew its already highly gerrymandered congressional map to eliminate multiple majority-nonwhite districts in an effort to create five more Republican seats. Since then, Democratic- and Republican-controlled states alike have redrawn their congressional maps to shut out voters of the other party. That accelerated after Callais, when several states rushed to diminish minority political power and cement partisan advantage. We could soon see states redistricting every two years.
This is untenable for a representative democracy.
As even the Supreme Court has previously acknowledged, partisan gerrymandering is undemocratic. Politicians use gerrymandering to draw uncompetitive districts and rig elections in their favor. Extreme gerrymandering can produce unrepresentative maps that virtually guarantee election outcomes, even when voters’ preferences shift dramatically. The party in control of the process can sometimes win a large majority of seats with only a minority of the vote. The principal losers in this system are the American people. In a system that is not responsive to voter preferences, voters cannot hold their politicians accountable.
Unsurprisingly, partisan gerrymandering is wildly unpopular. In an April 2026 poll, 69 percent of Republicans, 70 percent of independents, and 74 percent of Democrats said that states should not be allowed to draw congressional districts that intentionally favor one party over another; only 7 percent of Americans said that partisan gerrymandering should be allowed.
Partisan gerrymandering is not new, but the potential for judicial interventions once deterred the most extreme abuses. In 2019, the Roberts Court removed the restraints. In Rucho v. Common Cause, it decided that federal courts may not limit partisan gerrymandering at all, effectively green-lighting the practice nationally and making possible the current frenzy.
In Callais, the Supreme Court went even further. The Voting Rights Act had imposed a brake on the extent of gerrymandering by ensuring that electoral maps could not be discriminatory. In practice, this limited the lengths to which legislatures could go to rig maps. But Callais turned this upside down. In it, the Court ruled that racially discriminatory maps are permissible so long as lawmakers say their goals are partisan. In other words, the Court turned partisan gerrymandering into an affirmative excuse for discriminating against voters of color in redistricting. This is especially damaging in places like the South, where race and political preferences are often closely linked.
Congress should ban partisan gerrymandering in federal elections and prohibit mid-decade redistricting. A national law stands as the only hope of ending retributive cycles in which partisans in each state compete to out-gerrymander one another. No state or political party would unilaterally disarm in this destructive race for advantage in Congress, but a national law would disarm them all.
Such legislation would emphatically be constitutional. Indeed, the Roberts Court effectively preapproved Congress acting to fix the problem. In Rucho, the Court clearly stated that “the Framers gave Congress the power to do something about partisan gerrymandering in the Elections Clause.” It also approvingly described a precursor to the Freedom to Vote Act, which was then pending in Congress, that would have banned the practice. It is time for Congress to take up that invitation.
Moreover, stopping partisan gerrymandering would mitigate racial discrimination in redistricting. As the Supreme Court noted in Callais, many jurisdictions see a close connection between partisan preferences and race. If partisan advantage is no longer a legitimate map-drawing goal, it will be harder to disempower minority communities without expressly discriminating on the basis of race, in violation of the Constitution.
The Freedom to Vote Act would have prohibited partisan gerrymandering; imposed uniform, nationwide standards for states to follow when drawing congressional districts; and banned mid-decade redistricting. Other bills seeking to corral gerrymandering are currently pending in Congress, sponsored by members from both parties. Congress should ensure that voters choose their politicians, not the other way around.
Strengthen Voting Rights Protections
Congress must also strengthen voting rights protections. It should do so in at least three ways.
A Robust and Enforceable Right to Vote
First, Congress should legislate a robust and enforceable right to vote.
The U.S. Constitution has no fewer than six provisions that protect or expand voting rights, but it does not explicitly grant Americans a clear and affirmative right to vote. Over the past two decades, the Roberts Court has watered down those protections, making it harder for Americans to defend against discriminatory voting practices and other forms of vote suppression. In a series of decisions dating back to 2008, the Court reinterpreted the Constitution to allow states to hinder voting with minimal justification, such as the mere expression of concern about fraud. It is now incredibly difficult to successfully challenge restrictive laws under the Constitution, because the Court has made clear that pretextual justifications are typically sufficient to override voters’ interests.
Congress must not accept this status quo. It has the power, under the Elections Clause and the 14th Amendment, to enact and enforce a right to vote. The protections in the Constitution are a floor; Congress can, by statute, exceed it.
Such a law should clearly grant every eligible American citizen an enforceable right to vote. For the right to be meaningful, it should outweigh other considerations. To accomplish that, Congress should provide that any law or practice that makes it harder to vote would be subject to strict scrutiny by the courts. Any burden on voters would stand only if the government could demonstrate that its policy was necessary to achieve a compelling state interest and that there was no less restrictive way to achieve its goal. Vague claims that a policy would stop voter fraud (absent proof that fraud is a problem) would no longer justify widespread burdens on the right to vote. This is especially important when misinformation and conspiracy theories about fraud are routinely leveraged to justify restrictive voting policies and lawsuits seeking to overturn elections. States would remain free to establish reasonable measures to protect election security, taking care to ensure that those measures do not needlessly or recklessly disenfranchise voters. While a right to vote would be race neutral, it would thwart discriminatory vote suppression measures.
To ensure that Americans can protect their rights, Congress should also include an explicit private right of action, allowing voters to sue. The Supreme Court has become stingy in allowing Americans to vindicate their rights in court, but Congress can protect voters with a clear statutory right. Congress should also address other obstacles to voting rights that the Roberts Court has imposed, including by clarifying that courts should be able to remove last-minute obstacles placed on voting and by making explicit that state governments and the federal government are not immune to suits to enforce voting rights.
Many of these safeguards were almost enacted as part of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. After nearly 20 years of the Supreme Court watering down protections for voting rights, Congress can and should restore and strengthen them.
Meaningful Legal Claims Against Intentional Discrimination
Second, Congress should enact a clear path to challenge intentional racial discrimination in voting.
The 15th Amendment prohibits the federal government and the states from infringing on the right to vote on the basis of race. While the amendment was intended to broadly bring about voting equality, the Supreme Court long ago interpreted it only to prohibit intentional discrimination, which is notoriously difficult to prove; would-be discriminators rarely state their discriminatory purpose out loud. That is one reason why Congress passed the Voting Rights Act and why, in 1982, in response to court decisions narrowly interpreting the act, Congress amended it to make clear that voters could bring suits to remedy discriminatory results without having to prove intent. With Callais, the Court nullified that effort.
What’s more, in a series of decisions, the Roberts Court has made it exceedingly difficult to enforce the prohibition on intentional discrimination. For example, the Supreme Court has said that courts must apply a “presumption of good faith” — the premise that lawmakers acted without discriminatory intent when they drew maps unless a plaintiff proves otherwise. Courts have then prevented voters from gathering the evidence necessary to overcome this presumption, applying legislative privilege to lawmakers’ communications (even with parties outside the legislature). And, under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, they have shielded officials from liability for violating voting rights. But Congress has the authority under the 15th Amendment to set rules that better enforce the prohibition against intentional discrimination.
Congress can and should pass a law making it easier to address intentional racial discrimination. It should abolish the presumption of good faith and legislative privilege. These court-made rules have no constitutional basis. Congress should further make clear that the law abrogates sovereign immunity, provides the broadest possible standing to sue under Article III of the Constitution, and empowers courts to change or set aside state rules when necessary to vindicate constitutional rights so that procedural hurdles and timing do not get in the way of effective enforcement. Additional safeguards from the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act could also strengthen protections against discrimination and voter intimidation.
Baseline National Standards for Voting Access
Third, Congress should enact baseline national standards for voting access that every American can rely on and that are not subject to constant manipulation.
The Roberts Court’s decisions undermining federal voting rights protections have opened the door to a flood of new state laws and practices that make it harder for American citizens to vote, politicizing election procedures year after year. In the 13 years since Shelby County v. Holder, more than half the states have enacted restrictive voting laws — more than 100 in total — and done so often close to Election Day. Voters in many states have experienced compounding burdens as legislatures have passed multiple such laws in successive years. This trend both disenfranchises citizens and destabilizes election administration. And it has contributed to growing racial disparities in voter participation, as many of these new laws disproportionately harm voters of color.
National standards would prevent states from manipulating their voting rules in unfair and destabilizing ways. A number of best practices have succeeded in red and blue states to make voting more accessible and convenient and to enhance the reliability and accuracy of election systems. They include automatic voter registration and other measures to improve registration as well as expanded access to early voting and mail voting, which were included in the Freedom to Vote Act. That is just a start.
Minimum national standards would also curb discriminatory state voting policies. Dissenting in Brnovich, Justice Elena Kagan explained that one of the “subtle” ways to accomplish discrimination “is to impose ‘inconveniences,’ especially a collection of them, differentially affecting members of one race.” National standards would take some of these seemingly race-neutral tools off the table. For example, states would no longer be able to selectively eliminate early voting days that are disproportionately used by communities of color, such as Sundays, when Black churches run “souls to the polls” drives.
Establishing national standards would build confidence in elections. It would reduce the confusion caused by wildly varying and constantly changing election practices, while leaving states and localities the flexibility to tailor implementation to local circumstances. And it would foster an expectation that every voter, no matter their zip code or time zone, can make their intentions known at the ballot box with confidence that their vote will be free from interference.
Setting national rules for voting is well within Congress’s broad constitutional authority to “make or alter” election regulations. Indeed, the framers gave Congress this power precisely to curb state abuses of their authority to manipulate elections. Congress should use this power to enact commonsense policies that already have a strong track record of improving voting access and enhancing election integrity. This national floor would also insulate against discriminatory maneuvers that disproportionately burden voters of color.
Reform the Supreme Court
Third, at a time when Americans’ trust and confidence in the Supreme Court is at record lows, Congress should reform the Court and restore balance to our constitutional system, starting with term limits for justices.
The Supreme Court has vast power but minimal accountability. It is not functioning as it should. It has repeatedly overruled long-standing precedents, dramatically reshaping our government, law, and country and undermining democratic values. The Callais decision is a painful example, effectively overruling the central accomplishment of the civil rights movement.
In addition to causing deep damage, Callais was shockingly misleading. Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion purported to simply “update” precedent when really it was rewriting the law into a nullity, and it distorted facts to suggest that racial disparities in voting rates had disappeared when really they have been consistently increasing for years. Moreover, the procedural irregularities in how the case was handled created the impression of politicized decision-making. For example, the Court’s decision to fast-track its final judgment, a departure from its usual procedural practice, seemed timed to green-light new (and discriminatory) maps in Louisiana and across the South in advance of the midterms.
The Roberts Court has also regularly abused the shadow docket to issue rulings with wide-ranging consequences without hearing any argument or offering any explanation, disregarding regular judicial procedures. After Callais, the Court took unusual steps to summarily undo a two-year-old order remedying discrimination in Alabama’s congressional maps, causing chaos in the middle of the election season.
The Callais decision is the latest in a series of highly politicized rulings that have contracted Americans’ rights and aggrandized the Supreme Court’s power. And it is the culmination of a decades-long project by several justices to undo the Voting Rights Act and other gains of the civil rights movement.
No one should hold so much power for so long. Justices who stay on the Supreme Court for decades can shape the law and society for generations without adequate accountability. And they can become increasingly out of touch with the constitutional values of the country.
Congress can and should reform the Supreme Court to restore its credibility and its proper place in our democracy. The Constitution gives Congress wide latitude to define the Supreme Court’s structure and the justices’ duties so long as judicial independence is preserved.
Specifically, Congress should pass a statute adopting 18-year term limits for active service on the Supreme Court. Under this system, justices would rotate into other judicial roles after 18 years, creating one vacancy for each president to fill every two years. This would strengthen the Court’s democratic accountability and enhance its connection with public values while respecting judicial independence. It is already reflected in bills pending in Congress, including the TERM Act.
Term limits have broad public support. A 2024 Fox News poll shows 78 percent support for 18-year term limits; majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and independents are all supportive. A 2025 PRRI poll likewise shows that 75 percent of Americans support term limits. Bounded tenure would bring the Supreme Court in line with every state high court in the United States save Rhode Island. It is a reform whose time has come.
In response to Callais, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) issued a strong critique of the Roberts Court, saying that “the legitimacy of the Supreme Court has been deeply undermined” by the decision, which “reflects a malignant impulse to reshape American society — one governed not by liberty or law, but by ideology imposed from the bench.” In addition to calling for the passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the CBC said that it would “aggressively advance Supreme Court reform” and work to establish term limits for the justices to restore “independence, neutrality, and legitimacy to the Court.” Congress should heed the CBC’s call.
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Callais is a travesty, but it does not have to be the last word. The onus is now on Congress to repair the incredible damage the Supreme Court has done. It can and should end the gerrymandering wars by banning partisan gerrymandering and prohibiting mid-decade redistricting nationwide. It can and should end the vote suppression wars by enacting an enforceable right to vote for all Americans and minimum national standards for voting access. It can and should address discrimination in elections by making acts of intentional discrimination easier to prove and undo. It can and should restore balance to our system of government and confidence in our courts by reforming the Supreme Court, starting with instating 18-year term limits for justices. And it should not stop there. The hole left by the Voting Rights Act is enormous; the response should be at least as enormous.
