Voting rights advocates vow to ‘relocate’ fight after supreme court gutting

The organizations that fought for majority-minority districts across the US south are organizing their next steps The voting rights advocates who fought for majority-minority districts across the US south are organizing their next steps after the supreme court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act on Wednesday and eviscerated much of the work of the civil rights era. “I think that it is deeply troubling that in 2026 that many of us have less rights than our grandparents had – and that becomes truer and truer every year,” said Ashley K Shelton, CEO and president of Power Coalition for Equality and Justice, a Louisiana-based civic engagement organization and a plaintiff in the Callais case. Shortly after the supreme court decision, Shelton said that it was “deeply disappointing”. The VRA, which codified the 15th amendment’s voting protections for the first time, was signed into law after a hard battle. Exactly five weeks prior, approximately 600 people had aimed to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in demand of voting rights. On the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the demonstrators were brutally attacked by law enforcement officers, who confronted them with teargas, billy