Last week, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that will likely impact Black voters for generations.

The 6-3 decision, which split along conservative and liberal lines, essentially nullified Section 2 of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act,

which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race,

color, or language minority status. In its wake, Louisiana, Tennessee, and other states

are redrawing their district maps. Even the primary voting in some cases is already underway.

The ramifications will reverberate for decades.

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Friday, May 8th,

2026. Here to help me unpack this story, now joined by USA Today, White House correspondent,

Bart Janssen. Bart, it's always good to see you. Thanks for having me.

Bart, let's start with the ruling here. What did the justices decide?

Justice Samuel Alito wrote for a 6-3 majority that basically challenging congressional maps

requires evidence of a strong inference of discrimination.

So the court had previously ruled in 2019 that lawmakers could draw maps based on partisan differences.

If Republicans controlled a state legislature, they could draw maps that heavily favored Republicans. The justices said

they didn't want to get in the middle of a political dispute like that. That was best left for the

political branch. This new decision basically sets a higher hurdle to clear to challenge districts

based on racial differences. The challenge in the South is that many blacks

vote Democratic. So a map drawer could say, well, I was just trying to put a disadvantage on

Democrats and the challengers would be forced to show, well, how did this hurt blacks rather than

just Democrats? And that is viewed from all sides as becoming a very difficult hurdle to clear.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters in the decision, said it eviscerated the

1965 Voting Rights Act.

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