Supreme Court Should Completely Abandon Race-Based Voting Rights Jurisprudence
Source: Ben Weingarten. "Thomas Makes Case For Purging Court's Race-Based Decisions." May 6, 2026. thefederalist.com
The Gist
The author argues that Justice Thomas is right to call for completely scrapping the Supreme Court's approach to voting rights cases involving racial districting. Instead of just tweaking the current system, Thomas wants to go back to basics and say courts shouldn't be involved in these racial gerrymandering disputes at all.
Conclusion
The Supreme Court should abandon its entire approach to Voting Rights Act interpretation and stop entertaining districting challenges under Section 2, rather than merely modifying existing precedent
Premises
- Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was intended only to eliminate barriers to voter registration and ballot access, not to cover districting or vote dilution
- Current VRA jurisprudence forces courts to make political judgments about representation that are beyond the proper judicial role
- Race-based districting creates a system of 'political apartheid' that segregates voters by race into separate political districts
- The Court's expansive reading of the VRA has led to a corrupted system of proportional racial representation that assumes racial groups think alike politically
- Justice Thomas's 1994 Holder v. Hall concurrence provides the correct constitutional framework that should be fully adopted
- While Louisiana v. Callais was a step in the right direction, it only modifies flawed precedent rather than eliminating the fundamental problem
Assumptions
- Constitutional colorblindness is the proper legal standard
- Courts should interpret statutes based on text rather than expansive readings of legislative history
- Political questions about representation should be left to legislatures, not courts
- Race-based remedies for past discrimination are constitutionally problematic
- The original intent of the Voting Rights Act was narrowly focused on ballot access