Last Wednesday the Supreme Court handed down a decision that will reshape the electoral landscape of this entire country and furthered this country’s attack on Black voices and votes. 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was won after decades of sacrifice by the Civil Rights Movement. It outlawed literacy tests, voter intimidation, and other forms of systemic disenfranchisement. It resulted in nearly 250,000 new Black voters enrolled by the end of 1965 alone and gave voting power to the people, where it belongs. This was a result of tireless organizing of Black Civil Rights Leaders; it came at a high cost to make sure the right to vote was for everyone and not gatekept.

On April 29th, the Supreme Court — in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines — gutted the enforcement mechanism at the heart of the Voting Rights Act. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act previously allowed courts to strike down electoral maps that produced racially discriminatory results, even when legislators were careful not to say the quiet part out loud. Section 2 aimed at  protecting Black voters from their electoral influence being diluted and now the courts have thrown those safeguards away. The Court has now ruled that plaintiffs must prove discriminatory intent — a standard legal experts describe as nearly impossible to meet, because racism in 2026 rarely comes with a paper trail.

The practical consequence is this: states can now draw congressional maps that systematically eliminate Black and Brown political representation, and there is almost nothing left in federal law to stop them. Southern states have already begun.

Racism continues to be a present-day strategy with roots that go back to the founding of this nation in order to rule and control through dividing the people against each other. The conservative supermajority on this Court has stripped the enforcement mechanism that protected historically suppressed communities from the very forces seeking to suppress them— and called it equality.

You cannot claim progress while dismantling the road we took to get here.

Lancaster Stands Up, alongside our allies and partners, will fight to protect your right to vote — in Lancaster County and across Pennsylvania. 

The fight to restore the Voting Rights Act will be one that will not happen overnight. May we look to those who fought before us to guide us in modern struggle.

Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 

Let’s do some bending.