Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. and Viola Liuzzo did not die just for the conservative majority to commit this heartless act of political vandalism.
By Charles P. Pierce
Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.
April 29, 2026
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, the signature achievement of the Civil Rights Movement, is now as dead as Medgar Evers. It is as dead as Viola Liuzzo. It is as dead as James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. It is as dead as Rev. James Reeb. It is as dead as Vernon Dahmer. And it is as dead as Martin Luther King Jr. From The Guardian:
In a 6–3 decision along partisan lines, the court rendered ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 specifically has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.
And that’s all it took. Two paragraphs from a retrograde vandal named Justice Samuel Alito, and the VRA finally dies. Chief Justice John Roberts’s lifelong ambition is fulfilled. The Day of Jubilee is complete. From Alito’s majority opinion:
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to enforce the Constitution—not collide with it. Unfortunately, lower courts have some times applied this Court’s §2 precedents in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids. This tension between §2 and the Constitution came to a head when Louisiana redrew its congressional districts after the 2020 census. In 2022, a federal judge in the Middle District of Louisiana held that the map adopted by the state legislature likely violated §2 because it did not include an additional majority-black district. But when the State drew a new map that contained such a district, its new map was challenged as a racial gerrymander. A three-judge court in the Western District of Louisiana held that the new map violated the Equal Protection Clause, and the State appealed to this Court.
Another problem stemmed from the long-unresolved question whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act provides a compelling reason that may justify the intentional use of race in drawing legislative districts. For over 30 years, we have assumed for the sake of argument that the answer is yes. And we have gone further and assumed that it is enough if a State “ ‘ha[s] a strong basis in evidence’ ” for thinking that the Voting Rights Act requires race-based conduct. But allowing race to play any part in government decision making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context.
Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context. … Compliance with section 2 thus could not justify the State’s use of race-based redistricting here. The State’s attempt to satisfy the Middle District’s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The court declines to answer or explain how to enforce a law aimed at eliminating racial barriers to voting without allowing race “to play any part in government decision-making.” But there is no time for such concerns on the Day of Jubilee.
The three embattled liberals provided the usual eloquent dissents, which may become relevant some day in the dim future when Leonard Leo’s money, and his dreams of a Caucasian wonderland, have faded and the restorative benefits of the law … well, restore the nation’s promises. Until then, we’re all back to counting the jelly beans in a jar again. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote:
Today’s decision renders section 2 all but a dead letter. The decision here is about Louisiana’s district 6. But so too it is about Louisiana’s district 2. And so too it is about the many other districts, particularly in the south, that in the last half-century have given minority citizens, and particularly African Americans, a meaningful political voice. After today, those districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long.
Alito, of course, had words from on high as regards that consideration. It is, after all, the Day of Jubilee, and Kagan was not going to harsh his mellow or that of the chief.
Discrimination that occurred some time ago, as well as present-day disparities that are characterized as the ongoing “effects of societal discrimination,” are entitled to much less weight.
At the last, Kagan appealed to the VRA’s historical significance and how its adoption required that its advocates come through the fiery trial of, to use a phrase that is currently all the rage—political violence. Actual political violence, that is—bullets and the rope, not seashells and mean Xweets.
I dissent. The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—“one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history.” It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court. I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.
Kagan was quoting the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s equally eloquent dissent in Shelby County, the case in which the Day of Jubilee was first declared, and the long, steady slide back toward the jelly bean jar began. (Do I still wish Ginsburg had retired while Barack Obama was still president? You bet I do.) Viola Liuzzo and Medgar Evers and all the rest of them did not die on behalf of eloquent dissents. But eloquent dissents are the only legacy they have left.
