{"id":190608,"date":"2026-05-12T22:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T22:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/190608\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T22:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T22:47:10","slug":"u-s-supreme-court-restricts-voting-right-act-but-effect-on-pennsylvania-likely-limited-spotlight-pa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/190608\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Supreme Court restricts Voting Right Act, but effect on Pennsylvania likely limited | Spotlight Pa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on
\nvoting access and election administration across the U.S.
\nSign up for
\nVotebeat Pennsylvania\u2019s free newsletter here.<\/a><\/p>\n

The U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s decision in a Louisiana voting rights
\ncase will
\nmake it harder to challenge political maps<\/a> as being racially
\ndiscriminatory, but the ruling will likely have limited effect on
\nstatewide district maps in Pennsylvania, where the state
\nconstitution provides stronger protections against
\ngerrymandering.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3
\ndecision<\/a> split along ideological lines that raises the bar for
\nproving illegal racial gerrymandering.<\/p>\n

The case revolved around Section
\n2<\/a> of the Voting Rights Act, a Civil Rights era protection that
\nprohibits racial discrimination in voting and has historically been
\nused to challenge how voting districts are drawn and require that
\nmembers of a racial minority have an equal opportunity to elect
\ncandidates of their choice. In the most recent round of
\nredistricting, Louisiana\u2019s legislature drew a map that would create
\na second congressional district that was majority-Black, instead of
\nthe single majority-Black district it had previously. The new map
\nwas challenged on the grounds that it explicitly used race as the
\nbasis in determining the districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cAllowing race to play any part in government decisionmaking
\nrepresents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in
\nalmost every other context,\u201d conservative Justice Samuel Alito
\nwrote for the majority. He argued that compliance with Section 2
\n\u201ccould not justify the state\u2019s use of race-based redistricting
\nhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Election law experts in Pennsylvania have
\nsaid in the past<\/a> that Section 2 hasn\u2019t had much of an impact in
\nthe state.<\/p>\n

Chris Fowler, a geography professor at Penn State University,
\nsaid that\u2019s because there hasn\u2019t been a clear advantage for
\nmapmakers of either party in drawing majority-minority
\ndistricts.<\/p>\n

Most of the people of color in Pennsylvania are concentrated in
\nits major cities. Minority voters in Philadelphia, a heavily Black
\ncity, are generally already concentrated in districts where their
\nnumbers allow them to elect preferred candidates. Meanwhile,
\nPittsburgh has a smaller minority population, and Black communities
\nin the city tend to be geographically intermixed with communities
\nof other races. More racially mixed communities and less consistent
\nracial bloc voting make claims under Section 2 harder to bring in
\nPennsylvania than in the South.<\/p>\n

So while the Voting Rights Act remains relevant in the state and
\ncommunities of color exist, Fowler said there are \u201cvery
\nidiosyncratic reasons that it would be hard to win a case\u201d on those
\ngrounds in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

\u201dIt’s not necessary to draw a racially gerrymandered district to
\ngain advantage,\u201d he said. \u201cI think both parties sort of know it and
\nthey come up with maps that are pretty bland when it comes to
\nracial gerrymandering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Geffen, a lawyer at the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Public
\nInterest Law Center, agreed that Section 2\u2019s relevance in
\nPennsylvania has been limited, aside from the general background
\nrule it created \u2014 that you cannot discriminate racially when
\ndrawing districts \u2014 and the implications it has had for the growing
\nLatino population in the northeast part of the state.<\/p>\n

Section 2 has been invoked at the local level. Toward the end of
\nPresident Joe Biden\u2019s administration, his Department of Justice
\n
\nbrought a case against Hazleton<\/a>, alleging that its at-large
\nmethod of electing city council members was diluting the power of
\nHispanic voters. Donald Trump\u2019s Justice Department
\ndropped that case<\/a>. The Hazleton Area School District is
\ncurrently facing a
\nsimilar accusation<\/a> that its at-large elections lock Hispanic
\nvoters out \u201cfrom electing candidates of their choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Geffen has concerns about the Callais decision that extend
\nbeyond Pennsylvania. Namely, that more states may turn to drawing
\npartisan gerrymanders, which the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 in
\nRucho v. Common Cause that federal courts cannot review. He worries
\nthe overlap of racial and partisan voting trends could produce
\nsimilar maps that are harder to challenge.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania, however, has dealt with partisan gerrymandered
\nmaps several times in recent years, and the state\u2019s Supreme Court
\nhas struck them down. Geffen said that\u2019s because rules about
\nfairness are much stronger in state law than they are
\nfederally.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur [state] Supreme Court has said the [state] constitution
\nprohibits partisan gerrymandering, so state lawmakers can\u2019t
\nbrazenly draw maps for partisan gains,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that has
\nput important boundaries on what map makers do here that helps
\navoid the excesses we see in other parts of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marian Schneider, an adjunct professor of law at Villanova
\nUniversity, said that in her two decades practicing election law in
\nPennsylvania she has only pursued one case related to Section 2.
\nShe agreed state law protections are stronger, and said there may
\nbe a path to bring the types of arguments in state court that a
\nplaintiff might have previously made in federal court under Section
\n2.<\/p>\n

But Schneider said that regardless of Section 2\u2019s historically
\nlimited role in Pennsylvania, Wednesday\u2019s ruling will have an
\neffect on the state\u2019s voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing that other states could engage in suppression of
\nminority voters, we are all affected by that, because if they are
\nnot truly electing people that reflect the voters, what happens in
\nCongress affects all of us,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with
\nSpotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[296,856,28,30,29,50,13436,85],"class_list":["post-190608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-local","tag-national","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-politics","tag-spotlight_pa","tag-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}