In its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the John Roberts-led conservative majority of the Supreme Court struck another damaging blow to fair minority representation in our fragile democracy. Born out of struggles during the Civil Rights era, when people gave their lives to win the right to vote and participate in governing, the Voting Rights Act was enacted by Congress to ensure that former slaves, among others, were not denied the right to full citizenship. The struggle did not end there and continues today. In its latest action to eviscerate the VRA, particularly Section 2, the conservative bloc of Justices found the creation of a second majority-black district in Louisiana was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Once again, turning the 15th Amendment on its head, Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion for the six-Justice majority used the stated clause that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” to promote a color-blind reading, barring actions to protect minority voting rights. In the view of this court, the very creation of majority-minority districts is discriminatory and unconstitutional, although it did not state that Louisiana’s previous majority-black district was unconstitutional.
(Read Jeannie Suk Gerson’s article in the latest issue of The New Yorker for an excellent overview of how the Supreme Court arrived at its decision.)
This decision could open the floodgates to similar challenges to majority-black districts in other states. The Constitution’s framers limited the voting franchise to propertied white men at the beginning of our political experiment because they were concerned about the divisiveness of interests and believed affluent white men had the most at stake. Contrary to the beliefs of Originalists or Strict Constructionists, which include the late Antonin Scalia and current Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett, many, if not most, of the framers viewed the Constitution as a living document that would be amended as the nation and the world evolved.
Women did not get suffrage until 1920, decades after the 14th Amendment penalized states that denied the vote to “male inhabitants” over the age of 21, and the 15th Amendment extended voting to male former slaves. Efforts to deny the right to vote to segments of the American populace continue to this day. See Ari Berman’s Give Us the Ballot for a comprehensive overview of modern-day efforts to suppress the vote. See Eric Foner’s The Second Founding for an in-depth understanding of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.
While anger and grief are understandable responses to this latest Supreme Court attack on the Voting Rights Act, surrendering to despair cannot be an option. Our children’s futures depend on what we do now. Clearly, we must redouble our commitment to being more engaged in political and legislative arenas. How that is operationalized depends on your career choices. Direct service providers and administrators must increase their engagement with communities. This can be done in nonpartisan ways. There is a growing cadre of political social workers who bring our knowledge and skills to these settings full-time.
Safeguarding voting rights is not just a matter of values; it’s a matter of strategic advocacy, institutional presence, and sustained engagement with power. Barbara Mikulski, the second-longest serving woman in Congress, describes politics as “social work with power.” We have begun describing our legislative advocacy work as bringing communities to Congress. CRISP is creating pathways for students, practitioners, researchers, and affected communities to enter the federal policy conversation.
We tell researchers that it is not enough to bring their research implications to the Hill; they must pursue research relevant to deliberations on the Hill and in statehouses, and, for that matter, in municipal councils. Policymakers are more responsive to arguments that combine moral clarity with empirical credibility. We must be more intentional about aligning research outputs with policy windows—timing, framing, and accessibility matter as much as methodological rigor.
We must build coalitions that extend beyond our profession. Partnerships with legal organizations, civil rights groups, public health systems, and even business coalitions can broaden influence and create political cover. The goal is not ideological purity; it is durable outcomes.
Finally, the profession has to confront an internal tension: its strong ethical commitments versus its historically uneven engagement with political power. If social work wants to safeguard minority rights, it cannot remain ambivalent about politics. It needs a clearer pipeline into governance—more social workers in elected office, in senior administrative roles, and in policy leadership positions. Without that, the profession risks being influential in narrative but marginal in decision-making.
Rights are protected where power is organized, informed, and strategically applied. Social work already has the proximity to communities and the ethical framework. The next step is to match that with consistent, disciplined engagement in the arenas where decisions are actually made.