The Roberts Court has turned the Voting Rights Act on Its head

Editor's note: The following article was first published by The Washington Spectator, May 19, 2026.

I am the North Carolina lawyer who served as lead counsel for the Black citizens whose lawsuit led to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Thornburg v. Gingles. That case gave life to Congress’s 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act. Those amendments were born from a simple reality that every voting rights lawyer understood: what matters most is what happens when we deny Black communities the ability to elect representatives of their choosing. The motivation of the people who caused the exclusion is less important.

Before the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act, minority voters who challenged discriminatory election systems had to prove that lawmakers acted with racially discriminatory intent. Congress understood how unrealistic that requirement was, and that it missed the point. Legislatures do not announce that their aim is to weaken Black political power. They talk instead about county lines, incumbent protection, or partisan advantage. Moreover, the impact of the legislative action matters more than its intent.

Congress responded by amending Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act so that minority voters must prove discriminatory results, not racial animus. For representative democracy to be healthy, previously excluded racial and ethnic communities need to have a seat at the table.

In its recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court claimed it was refining the framework established in Gingles. This was far from mere refinement. The Court reversed the core logic of Gingles, requiring proof of discriminatory intent, and making it exponentially harder for Black, Latino, and other under-represented communities long excluded from political power to enforce the protections Congress had deliberately written into federal law.

My clients relied upon the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act when establishing their claim against the method of election to the North Carolina General Assembly.

When we filed the Gingles complaint, Black people comprised twenty-five percent of the population of North Carolina—yet there were only 4 Black representatives at that time in the 170-member North Carolina General Assembly. There was no smoking gun or declared racist purpose. The problem was with the rules that governed redistricting.

The North Carolina Constitution prohibited counties from being divided when legislative districts were drawn. In Mecklenburg County, for example, that meant that eight members of the state House and four members of the state Senate were elected countywide, or “at large”. If Mecklenburg County, which had a Black population of roughly twenty-five percent, had been divided into eight fairly drawn one-member House districts, there would have been enough Black people to elect candidates of their choice in two of them. But twenty-five percent was not enough to prevail in countywide elections dominated by a white voting majority.

The problem was the electoral structure imposed by the State. Congress amended Section 2 to address exactly this kind of exclusion. The Gingles court agreed that this whole county provision, when applied to North Carolina’s large counties, violated the Voting Rights Act.

Under the new approach the Court has adopted in Callais, it is unlikely the Gingles plaintiffs would now prevail.

In Callais, the Court says that Voting Rights Act plaintiffs must show that an election system was adopted with discriminatory intent. One way plaintiffs can prevail is to produce direct evidence of racial animus, evidence that those drawing discriminatory maps rarely leave behind.

Alternatively, plaintiffs can create an inference of discriminatory intent by proving, among other things, that additional majority Black districts could be drawn while also meeting the rules and goals declared by the state—even when those very rules caused the exclusion in the first place. The Gingles plaintiffs certainly would not have been able to show that they could create majority Black districts while keeping counties whole.

The requirement that plaintiffs show that majority Black districts can be created using all the rules and goals of the state becomes even more consequential when combined with the Supreme Court’s other redistricting decisions.

Earlier, in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court held that federal courts are not able to resolve partisan gerrymandering claims. In Callais, the Court emphasized that a goal of partisan gerrymandering is legitimate, and also accepted specific incumbent protection as a permissible objective of the redistricting process.

Putting those decisions together, legislatures now have a defense that almost always will defeat a claim of illegal racial exclusion. The state can justify racially exclusionary outcomes by saying they were protecting incumbents. Or maximizing partisan advantage. Or preserving existing political structures. Honoring those goals will almost always make it impossible to create additional majority Black districts.

Many people have asked whether the ruling in Callais makes me feel that my work as a voting rights lawyer in the 1980s and 1990s was wasted.

It does not.

Because of Gingles and the cases that followed it, North Carolina and this country spent four decades opening political doors that had long been shut. Black, Latino, and other previously excluded citizens were empowered to serve in city halls, county commissions, state legislatures, and Congress. For the first time in modern North Carolina history, Black representation in the legislature began to look like North Carolina itself. Thousands of smart, capable citizens gained the experience that enabled them to lead over the decades, build institutions, mentor others, and change American public life. And those leaders now have the status, experience and skills to figure out how to lead us towards a better future.

That work mattered. It still matters.

When Congress amended Section 2 in 1982, it reaffirmed a basic democratic principle: voters should choose their representatives. The Court’s decision in Callais, when combined with its other redistricting decisions, makes the opposite principle far more likely: representatives will choose their voters.

I am distraught not because the work of my generation was wasted, but because the Callaisdecision makes me fear for the future of representative democracy in the United States.

Leslie J. Winner is the co-founder and co-Chair of the NC Leadership Forum, a program of Duke University to increase cross-partisan dialogue and engagement. A distinguished public interest lawyer, Winner has served as Executive Director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, Vice-President and General Counsel to the University of North Carolina and General Counsel, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education. 

From 1993-1998 Winner served three terms in the North Carolina Senate, representing a portion of Mecklenburg County.