A “demolition” at SCOTUS
  April 30, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, Today is my second-favorite day of the year because it’s the one where I get to see the below gif at least 49857394768 times in 24 hours. Life is beautiful.  In today’s newsletter, we take a look at the fallout of the Supreme Court’s voting rights case. Plus, a brief dispatch from down unda’. ♉, Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONMoving the line: Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down what Justice Elena Kagan described in her dissent as “the latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.” Louisiana v. Callais, which was decided 6-3 on partisan lines, centered around a new voting map in Louisiana that had created two majority-Black districts. The map was challenged by a group of “non-African Americans” who were concerned about their voting power being diluted in the state. The Court sided with the challengers and ruled that Louisiana could not use the new map, agreeing with a lower court ruling that the map violated the equal protection clause in the U.S. Constitution. All of this tramples over Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was written to prevent conservative map makers from gerrymandering minority voters into oblivion. Essentially, what the court just did, says Stetson University law professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, was allow legislatures to “make the excuse that they are drawing the map lines for partisan advantage” rather than have to cop to racial gerrymandering. To combat unfair and racist maps, constituents will have to go above and beyond to near-impossible heights to prove racial bias. This ruling, Kagan writes, “will effectively insulate any practice, including any districting scheme” that can be branded as “race neutral.”  ACTIVISTS OUTSIDE THE SUPREME COURT DURING ORAL ARGUMENTS FOR THIS CASE LAST YEAR, LAST YEAR. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) While Section 2 has not been entirely struck down, it has been defanged, and the right knows it. And they’re acting quickly: Louisiana governor Jeff Landry announced to GOP House candidates that he planned to suspend May’s primary elections so lawmakers can redraw congressional maps. Florida’s House Republicans approved new GOP-friendly congressional maps just hours after the decision. And Mississippi—where a federal judge had recently ordered that maps get redrawn precisely because they violated Section 2—is planning a special legislative session to redraw its maps. “The ruling invites states to dilute Black and brown voting power,” Carmen Daugherty of the Advancement Project noted, “and will result in aggressive racial gerrymandering that will shrink minority representation in government.” It’s almost certain that red states will be moving fast to prioritize white voters ahead of a crucial midterm election season. As we feel we must always say in times like this, all hope is not lost. There are ways to continue the fight for fairer maps, Torres-Spelliscy says. “As many states as possible need to adopt independent redistricting commissions”—which work to eliminate gerrymandering by taking the task of drawing electoral maps away from the legislature—and add “amendments to state constitutions that will give voters some measure of protection that was stripped away by the Supreme Court.” This is also the time when we absolutely need to show up and show out at the midterms, which are almost exactly six months away. As legal scholar Dahlia Lithwick put it: “The stakes are absolutely vast, and we’re still parsing what’s going to happen in the midterms…But what we know is that there is this one lingering power, which is to get out and vote.” AND:
ONE MORE THING: THE WORLD’S WOMEN CONVENE IN AUSTRALIAThis week in Melbourne (Narrm), Australia, more than 6,000 feminists from everywhere from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe attended Women Deliver, a gathering designed to align on solutions that will actually achieve gender equality. I first attended this conference in Copenhagen in the spring of 2016, which feels both strange and sad (we all remember what happened on November 9th of that year). I was eager to be back to hear from the world’s leading advocates from the Pacific region and all over the world on a key question: Are we closer to achieving ANY of the gender equality goals that we outlined a decade ago? I might have expected the answer to be no, especially given the rollback of women’s rights worldwide and the rise of authoritarian leaders and tradwives alike. And it would have been easy to imagine that, given the ongoing debate in the U.S. about whether feminism ruined the workplace or wrecked the institution of marriage, the mood here would be cautious at best, despondent at worst.  PRINCESS MARY OF DENMARK (CENTER) AT THE WOMEN DELIVER CONFERENCE IN 2019. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) What I’ve found instead is joy around every corner. Of course, there is an understandable urgency on issues ranging from child marriage to maternal mortality, in addition to the existential question of whether global democracy can hold on long enough to save us. But it turns out, it’s feminists who will save us—simply because they are out there in their communities, getting things done. As Happy Mwende Kinyili pointed out as she announced the launch of the Accelerate Together campaign, designed to drive hundreds of millions of dollars to women’s rights activists annually: “Feminist movements are proven engines of social change.” So we spent this week talking, strategizing, dancing, and drinking lots of coffee. And we did it together. My favorite moment was from ʻOfa Guttenbeil-Likiliki, a filmmaker and women’s rights activist from Tonga, who said during a discussion of how to end gender-based violence: “If this is a global movement, it must move the way the ocean moves…leaving no woman behind.” Words to live by, until we meet again. —Tara Abrahams  FOLLOW THE METEOR      Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
