Analysis says Supreme Court’s ‘colorblind’ approach has weakened Voting Rights Act
TheGrio...
The Vox report traces the doctrine from the Reagan era to recent rulings that have made it more difficult to challenge racially discriminatory election maps.
A new analysis argues Supreme Court colorblindness helped turn a once-fringe legal theory into the foundation for decisions that have weakened the Voting Rights Act and placed a higher burden on Black voters challenging discriminatory election maps.
The Vox analysis, written by senior Supreme Court correspondent Ian Millhiser, traces the theory from legal debates in the 1970s to its influence on the current court. Under the colorblind constitutional theory, government action that classifies people by race is treated with suspicion even when it is intended to remedy historic discrimination.
Supporters describe that approach as equal treatment under the law. Critics argue that it treats policies designed to dismantle racial exclusion as constitutionally comparable to the exclusion those policies were created to address.
Millhiser points to Chief Justice John Roberts’ 2007 statement that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” The analysis also revisits Roberts’ work in the Reagan administration, when he opposed a 1982 amendment that strengthened results-based challenges under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
That position gained greater force after Roberts became chief justice. In Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, the court invalidated the formula used to determine which jurisdictions with histories of discrimination needed federal approval before changing election laws. In 2023, the court sharply restricted race-conscious admissions at colleges and universities.
The analysis says the doctrine moved further into voting law through Louisiana v. Callais in April. The 6-3 ruling struck down Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district and required Section 2 plaintiffs to produce evidence supporting a strong inference of intentional discrimination while separating race from partisan politics.
In June, the court applied the Callais standard in Allen v. Milligan and stayed a lower-court order blocking Alabama’s 2023 congressional map. That map contains only one majority-Black district, rather than the additional Black-opportunity district ordered during earlier litigation.
Supreme Court colorblindness now reaches beyond elections, Millhiser argues. When judges treat the theory as a constitutional command, they gain broader authority to invalidate race-conscious programs in education, hiring, contracting and other public policy areas.
The analysis concludes that new legislation alone may not restore those protections. Because the colorblind constitutional theory has been written into constitutional law, changing its reach could also require a future shift in the Supreme Court’s direction.