The New York Times | April 30, 2026
The central tenet of American democracy is the right to vote. But in practice, for Black voters, especially in the South, it wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that their access to the voting booth was fundamentally improved. The law eradicated many Jim Crow-era intimidation tactics.
The act also required electoral maps to be drawn in a way that allowed Black voters a chance to vote for someone of their choice, in part by requiring federal approval for maps in certain states and counties. Those changes led to a clear shift in representation in the U.S. House of Representatives for the South.
Since then, the number of Black lawmakers in the chamber has rapidly increased across the United States.
Louisiana is at the heart of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling. After the Civil War, the state was one of the few to elect a Black member to the House, in 1874. But, as Southern states moved to aggressively restrict Black voting rights, the state wouldn’t elect another until 1990.
As of early 2024, Black residents made up 33 percent of Louisiana’s population. Even as the population has changed over time, Black residents have consistently made up between 30 and 50 percent of the state’s total population.
A New York Times analysis calculated the number of Black lawmakers that would be proportional to a state’s Black population. It found that for most of Louisiana’s history, at least two Black representatives would have constituted a proportional share.
But Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing the majority opinion for the court in the Louisiana case, said arguments citing the correlation of Black representation to Black population “failed to disentangle race from politics.” He focused on voter registration and turnout instead, citing increased Black voter participation as evidence of “vast social change.”
Several Black leaders and voting rights groups rejected that assessment and said the ruling had rendered the law ineffective.