Louisiana v. Callais · ¶122

And because that is so, Congress in the Voting Rights Act made the practice illegal. Section 2 of that Act guarantees that members of every racial group have an equal “opportunity” to “elect representatives of their choice.” 52 U. S. C. § 10301(b). That promise arose from a far-too-prominent part of this Nation's history. Even after the Fifteenth Amendment banned racial discrimination in voting, state officials routinely deprived African Americans of their voting rights. Through a seemingly boundless array of mechanisms—most of them facially race-neutral and among them the drawing of district lines—States either prevented Black citizens from casting ballots or ensured that their votes would count for next to nothing. The Voting Rights Act was meant as the corrective. And when this Court construed it too narrowly—insisting that a person suing under Section 2 had to prove discriminatory…

preliminary print (page proof)
Source edition
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.