The Supreme Court Is Determined to Turn Voting Into a Limited Privilege

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In the United States, our ability to vote is supposed to be protected by law. But on the Voting Rights Act’s 60^th anniversary, that law is being eviscerated to stop voters and their lawyers from defending that freedom in court.

Our courts are a modern-day public square, where anyone is supposedly able to confront injustice, hold the powerful accountable, and defend their rights. For generations, courts helped ensure equal access to the ballot, striking down racial gerrymanders and discriminatory voting laws.

But now, that public square is being fenced off—and in some places, it feels like a permanent wall is going up.

The most consequential blow came in 2013, when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, effectively ending preclearance, which required states and localities with histories of discrimination to seek federal approval before changing voting laws.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts claimed the “blight of racial discrimination in voting” had been largely cured, a conclusion many called dangerously premature. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned in dissent, ending preclearance was like “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

Now, with Section 5 preclearance gone, the court is moving closer to gutting another critical piece of the VRA, with two lines of attack in play. One target, which has drawn increased attention over the past two years, is the ability of private actors to use the VRA to challenge racially motivated practices that suppress the vote. If the court endorses the view adopted by the 8^th Circuit, only the Department of Justice will be able to bring cases under Section 2 of the VRA.

But the court has also seized upon a second path to dismantle the VRA even more resoundingly. In a case slated for the October 2025 term, the court issued an after-hours order just last week—on the eve of the VRA’s 60^th anniversary—signaling plans to deliberate the constitutionality of Section 2 and its continued viability.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s DOJ has shown no interest in enforcing voting rights; it has removed career attorneys in the Voting Rights Section, backed away from key cases, and even floated prosecutions of election officials, straight from the Project 2025 playbook.

As courts become harder to access, the executive branch is compounding the threat—backing Trump’s executive order targeting independent election systems and promoting the dangerous SAVE Act, which is now pending in the U.S. Senate.

These proposals would force Americans to produce specific government documents just to register to vote—an uphill climb for tens of millions who lack access to those papers but are still trying to exercise their rights, even as courts become less willing to hear their claims. All in the name of stopping “voter fraud” that does not exist in this country at any meaningful level.

Even before these proposals, courts had made it harder for individuals and civil rights groups to challenge discriminatory voting laws. When it becomes difficult to find a lawyer—and nearly impossible to win in court—bad actors are left free to suppress votes without fear of consequences. The danger is greater with Big Law firms under attack from the administration. No lawyer can miss the message: If you take cases this administration doesn’t like, such as those in defense of voting rights, your livelihood could be next.

Over two decades, as the Supreme Court dismantled the VRA case by case, voter suppression has evolved. It’s become administrative—built on paperwork, confusion, inconvenience, and ever-changing rules. Americans now jump through a growing number of hoops just to vote. While it may not be as blatant as being required to guess the correct number of jelly beans in a jar, the toll is corrosive just the same.

The Supreme Court has hollowed out the VRA, stripping away the core protections Congress once put in place to defend the right to vote. With every new judicial decision, anti-voter policy has gained ground.

Within 24 hours of Shelby County v. Holder, Texas reinstated a strict photo ID law previously blocked for targeting Black and Latino voters. Two months later, North Carolina passed a law that cut early voting by a week, ended same-day registration, and imposed strict ID rules—later struck down for targeting Black voters “with almost surgical precision.”

Then in Brnovich v. DNC, the court made it even harder to prove that a voting law discriminates based on race. The ruling gave states broad leeway to pass restrictive laws, even those that disproportionately harm voters of color, as long as they could claim to be “preserving the integrity of its election process.” It was a significant blow to Section 2 of the VRA, the main tool left to fight voter suppression in court.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger cited the Brnovich ruling to justify SB 202, an “omnibus voter suppression” law passed after Trump lost the 2020 election. Since then, data has shown the law disproportionately impacts Black voters—the same kind of discriminatory effect Brnovich made harder to challenge in court by weakening Section 2, coming from the same kind of law that would have been halted had Section 5 preclearance not been destroyed in Shelby.

Raffensperger is currently overseeing a purge of nearly 500,000 voters, one of the largest in U.S. history. New analysis shows that when likely out-of-state movers are removed from the rolls, Black voters are overrepresented—raising familiar alarms about discrimination that today’s gutted legal tools can barely address.

Now, that weakened tool faces an even greater threat. In May of this year, a federal appeals court ruled for the second time that only the U.S. attorney general—not private citizens or civil rights groups—can bring Section 2 lawsuits. The decision applies across seven states and would block most VRA enforcement where the DOJ declines to act.

The court could be poised to go further and take that decision nationwide, leaving only the DOJ to sue to protect voting rights, hardly a priority in this and other Republican administrations.

Sixty years after the VRA was signed into law, the Supreme Court seems intent on ignoring history—and dismantling the public’s ability to use it to defend their right to vote.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Act, reintroduced by Sen. Raphael Warnock, wouldn’t undo all the damage done by the Supreme Court. But it would renew the promise of the VRA, restoring preclearance, stopping voter purges for inactivity, and ensuring people can still seek justice in court.

Ultimately, we’re in an era where the burden of protecting democracy is falling on individuals. That’s not how it should be. Voting is a right, not a privilege or a test of endurance.

Yet on the 60^th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act—a law meant to stop Jim Crow at the courthouse door—we’re inching back toward an era where justice is out of reach for those who need it most.

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