After the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, Black women leaders and grassroots organizers are calling this moment a new civil rights movement.

The Supreme Court has now done what generations of segregationists could not quite finish: it has all but dismantled the legal backbone of Black voting rights in America. On April 29, 2026, the Court issued its 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, effectively gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — the very provision that, for six decades, gave Black voters and other communities of color their most powerful legal tool against discriminatory maps and election schemes. In response, Black women leaders writing in Essence have declared that this moment demands nothing less than a new Freedom Summer — and the movement is already underway.

What the Supreme Court Just Did to Your Vote

To understand the stakes, you have to understand what Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act actually did. For six decades, the VRA served as the backbone of federal protections against racial discrimination in elections — an essential guardrail ensuring that every American, regardless of race, has a meaningful opportunity to participate in the political process. Section 2 was the tool voters used to challenge discriminatory district maps in court.

Then came Callais. The 6-3 Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais eviscerated Section 2 of the VRA and opened the door for states to enact discriminatory voting maps and laws — a decision that contradicts the text of the Voting Rights Act, the will of Congress, and the Constitution, and is one of the most consequential setbacks for multiracial democracy in a generation.

The case had a deeply ironic backstory. Black voters in Louisiana had been fighting for a fair congressional map for years. Following a successful challenge under Section 2, a federal court ruled that Louisiana’s map was discriminatory and needed to be redrawn to create an additional district where Black voters could elect their candidates of choice. Louisiana did so, and adopted a map with two opportunity districts — resulting in the election of two Black Louisianians to Congress for the first time in history. Then a group of white voters sued, and the Supreme Court sided with them.

The message was clear: Louisiana and every other state can now enact discriminatory maps with impunity. The Court effectively eliminated Section 2 by rewriting the rules to ensure plaintiffs cannot succeed in cases challenging racial discrimination in redistricting.

The three liberal justices dissented sharply. The majority opinion did not formally strike down Section 2, but Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent that it had been rendered “all but a dead letter.” Kagan’s dissent, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, went further. She wrote: “I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

The Ruling’s Reach Goes Far Beyond Louisiana

The Court did not stop at handing down its decision. It moved fast. The Supreme Court fast-tracked its April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, forgoing its normal procedures. Normally, the court waits 32 days after issuing an opinion before finalizing its ruling — but instead, the Republican supermajority issued an unsigned, one-paragraph order eliminating that waiting period.

The upshot is that Louisiana will almost certainly be able to redistrict away all of its majority-minority districts before the 2026 midterms, and the Court might well let all of the Southern states do the same.

The ripple effects are spreading fast across the South. Republican-controlled states are inclined to look at their current maps and consider redrafting any majority-minority districts they were forced to draw under the Voting Rights Act. Southern states like Georgia and South Carolina could see new maps before 2028. Anticipating the Callais outcome, Florida and Texas had already proceeded with redistricting before the decision came down.

By requiring proof of discriminatory intent — and rejecting evidence of discriminatory effect — the ruling shatters longstanding enforcement of Section 2, a cornerstone of civil rights protections for decades. In plain terms: states can now use partisan gerrymandering as a legal cover for racial voter suppression. The Court has made it clear that racial discrimination will be allowed so long as it is done under the guise of partisanship.

And it is not just congressional maps. The decision not only affects congressional maps but threatens state and local districts, too. From school boards to state houses, Black communities will have to fight harder to ensure their votes hold weight at the ballot box and their voices are heard in policymaking.

The Legacy That Brought Us Here — and the Women Keeping It Alive

The Essence op-ed draws a direct line from today’s crisis back to Ida B. Wells, and that connection is not rhetorical. It is historical fact. Wells, who was born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862, was a prolific investigative journalist and suffragist who campaigned tirelessly for anti-lynching legislation. She concluded that the violence shaping Reconstruction and Jim Crow was rooted in white fear of increased Black political power, and she encouraged Black Americans to embrace electoral organizing and exercise their right to vote.

The law did not apply equally to all even after women’s suffrage. Due to the prevalence of Jim Crow laws, it took another 45 years — and the passage of the Voting Rights Act — for Black women to be able to cast their ballots freely. The authors of the Essence piece — one leading a national voting rights organization, the other a journalist — describe themselves as Black women descended from enslaved people, writing that “today, one of us runs a national voting rights organization, and the other amplifies the stories of African Americans and women whose courage shaped this nation. Our very presence in these roles is proof of progress, and the setbacks Wells fought against remind us that we can never take such progress for granted.”

Their call to action echoes the original Freedom Summer of 1964, when efforts to register Black voters in Mississippi created political momentum for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Back then, approximately 17,000 Black residents of Mississippi attempted to register to vote in the summer of 1964, but only 1,600 of the completed applications were accepted by local registrars. That organized defiance in the face of brutal suppression eventually forced Congress to act. The authors argue the same defiance is needed now.

As the Essence piece puts it: “We are already seeing the beginnings of a new movement — a modern Freedom Summer shaped by the challenges of 2026.”

The Movement Fighting Back Right Now

This is not just rhetoric. Across the South, a mobilization is already underway.

Civil and voting rights organizations across the South are launching a wave of rallies, trainings, and grassroots mobilizations in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, a ruling that further weakens protections under the Voting Rights Act and threatens Black political representation nationwide.

Key actions include:

• The Alabama “We Got Us” tour, organized by Black Voters Matter, running May 15–19 across multiple Alabama cities.
• A coalition of voting rights groups marched over the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on May 16, 2026, following a prayer service at Tabernacle Baptist Church, as part of the All Roads Lead to the South: National Day of Action.
• The John Lewis Good Trouble Lives On Weekend of Action, July 17–19 — a three-day national mobilization to honor the legacy of the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis by organizing, acting, and registering voters ahead of the 2026 midterms.
• The ACLU and its partners have already taken legal action in more than two dozen states and Washington, D.C., and are currently advancing over 80 legal actions challenging discriminatory voting laws, racial gerrymandering, attacks on mail voting and voter registration.

NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson put it plainly: “What the Supreme Court essentially did is destroy the most significant piece of policy legislation of the civil rights movement.” Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock, preaching from Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, called the result “Jim Crow in new clothes.”

What Congress Can — and Must — Do

The courts have retreated. The responsibility now falls on Congress and on voters themselves.

The Court’s decision has prompted renewed calls for Congress to pass new voting rights protections at the federal level. “This is really a call to action to Congress to step in and ensure that our elections are fair,” says Hillary Harris Klein, a senior counsel at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

The Congressional Black Caucus issued a statement “demanding a vote on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act without delay.” That bill, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, would restore and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, most notably its requirement for states and jurisdictions with a history of voting rights violations to seek federal approval before enacting certain changes to their voting laws. The bill was introduced on March 5, 2025, but remains referred to the House Judiciary Committee with only 25% progression. With Republicans controlling both chambers, its path forward is steep.

States can also adopt their own voting rights protections — such as State Voting Rights Acts — ensuring that voters are shielded from discrimination even when federal protections falter. That is a fight that can happen closer to home, including in New York.

What You Can Do

Freedom Summer was not built by institutions alone. Freedom Summer highlighted the power of mass mobilization in securing and protecting Black political power. That lesson applies now as much as it did in 1964.

Here is where to start:

1. Register and verify your registration. Voter roll purges are accelerating. Check your status at vote.gov before your state’s next deadline.
2. Contact your members of Congress. Demand a floor vote on the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. As Sen. Dick Durbin said when reintroducing the bill: “There is no freedom more fundamental than the right to vote. Between the Trump Administration’s executive order on voter registration and state legislatures gerrymandering districts, there has been a clear, concerted effort to chip away at the protections guaranteed to every American under the Voting Rights Act.”
3. Support grassroots organizations. Groups like Black Voters Matter, the NAACP, the Campaign Legal Center, and the ACLU Voting Rights Project are doing the work on the ground and in the courts right now.
4. Show up in November. The NAACP will mount a mobilization campaign to send voters in droves to the polls to urge them to elect leaders who will advocate on their behalf. That effort only works if people answer the call.

The Bottom Line

The Voting Rights Act was won through sacrifice. During Freedom Summer 1964, it is believed that 1,062 people were arrested, 80 Freedom Summer workers were beaten, 37 churches were bombed or burned, and four civil rights workers were killed. That sacrifice produced the most powerful voting rights law in American history. Now, a six-justice majority has spent more than a decade undoing it — and with Callais, they may have finished the job in federal court.

But as the authors in Essence remind us, the courts do not get the last word. The people do. “The Court has acted. But it will not be the end of this story.” Freedom Summer 2026 is not a slogan. It is a summons. The question is whether enough people will answer it before November.

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