Professor of Law Paula Johnson contributed the opinion article “Supreme Court’s voting rights decision silences Black voters” to Syracuse.com in response to the recent Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais.
In the article, Johnson provides a historical review of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, its impact on the civil rights of Black voters, and how the ruling will affect minority voting going forward.
She concludes that, “while it is not fully extinguished, this democratic promise is now dimming under the Supreme Court’s latest ruling on the VRA. This is one of the most consequential decisions by the modern Supreme Court, for as Ashley Shelton, founder and CEO of the Power Coalition, a Louisiana statewide civic engagement organization, asks, ‘What is citizenship without representation?’ This is a question, a calling and a challenge, not just for Black voters, but for everyone who genuinely believes in the right of fair representation in a democratic society. We must vote like our democracy depends on it, because it does.”