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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Last June, the Court surprised nearly everyone who follows voting rights litigation by declaring Alabama’s racially gerrymandered maps illegal and ordering the state to draw a second majority-Black congressional district.
Indeed, the Supreme Court just reaffirmed in Health and Hospital Corporation v. Talevski (2023) that Section 1983 gives private individuals broad authority to sue to enforce their statutory rights.
The entire purpose of the Voting Rights Act was to prevent Jim Crow states, including Georgia, from running their elections in ways that depart from the federal commitment to racial equality.
The 15th Amendment prohibits states from denying or abridging the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and it provides that “Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Court’s Republican appointees simply made up a doctrine — “the principle that all States enjoy equal sovereignty” — that is never once mentioned in the Constitution in order to justify striking down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.
At the very least, Stras’s and Branch’s opinions are likely to force the Supreme Court to resolve this tension between Milligan and its previous, less justifiable decisions undercutting the Voting Rights Act.
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