TOPSHOT - People wait in line to vote outside a polling station at the Dryland United Church of Christ on Election Day in Nazareth, Pennsylvania on November 5, 2024. (Photo by SAMUEL CORUM / AFP) (Photo by SAMUEL CORUM/AFP via Getty Images)

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The Louisiana ruling is part of a larger attack on Black political influence in the South at the very moment people need relief most

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais is not just a redistricting case. It is a direct challenge to the idea that Black voters should have a fair chance to shape the laws, budgets and policies that govern their lives.

That matters because voting rights have never been only about accessing a ballot. They have always been about economic power. They determine who gets to influence school funding, health care access, infrastructure, housing policy, workforce investment and the public resources that help families and small businesses survive. For Black people in the South, where Reconstruction’s promise was followed by Jim Crow, poll taxes and other legal barriers to voting, the fight is about whether democracy can still help correct structural inequality or whether those inequities will deepen.

Louisiana v. Callais threatens to sharply narrow, and potentially dismantle, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the core provision courts have long used to challenge voting maps and practices that dilute voting strength of communities of color. In a state like Louisiana, where Black communities have long been concentrated, underrepresented and politically targeted, the ruling does not simply redraw a district. It redraws the boundaries of power. And it sends a chilling message well beyond Louisiana’s borders: that the legal protections created to prevent the silencing of Black voters can be diluted until they are nearly meaningless.

Researchers at UC San Diego found that the Voting Rights Act did far more than expand access exercising the right to cast a vote. It also narrowed racial economic inequality by increasing Black political power, especially through stronger public-sector employment, better enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and greater responsiveness from elected officials. The study found that in counties with stronger voting-rights protections, the Black-white wage gap fell more sharply between 1950 and 1980, with the law contributing about a 5.5 percentage point increase in Black wages relative to white workers in comparable places. It also found that when the Supreme Court weakened the law in 2013, Black families experienced renewed economic disenfranchisement, with wage gaps widening again in jurisdictions once covered by the Act.

That should alarm every American, but especially those of us who understand that political power is a prerequisite for economic justice. When Black communities cannot elect representatives who are accountable to them, they lose more than symbolic representation. They lose the ability to fight for grocery stores instead of food deserts, clinics instead of closed hospitals, real transit instead of isolation, small business funding instead of predatory lending and fair wages instead of permanent precarity.

For example, recent research using Census Bureau data from Brookings shows Black-owned employer businesses surpassed 200,000 in 2023 and grew 62 percent from 2017 to 2023, but Black Americans still made up only 3.4 percent of employer business owners even though they were 14.4 percent of the population. That gap is not an accident. It reflects generations of exclusion from capital, contracts and political power.

This ruling also comes at a moment when Americans are already struggling under an affordability crisis. The Consumer Price Index rose 3.3 percent over the year ending in March 2026, while energy prices climbed 12.5 percent and gasoline prices jumped 18.9 percent. Black unemployment remains stubbornly high at 7.1 percent, nearly double the white unemployment rate of 3.6 percent and the highest of any race. Small businesses are also feeling the squeeze, with rising utility costs, higher input prices and thin margins forcing many owners to raise prices or cut back just to stay open.

Rising unaffordability and the curtailing of voting rights are not separate issues. They are interconnected. When prices rise, wages lag and small businesses struggle, communities need government to respond with urgency and fairness. They need public officials who understand the daily math of survival. They need leaders who will protect consumers, support entrepreneurs and invest in the neighborhoods most likely to be left behind. That is why voting rights matter so much to economic mobility. Without political power, the people most affected by inflation and disinvestment are least likely to shape the solutions.

For Black Americans in the South, this is not theoretical. It is history repeating itself in modern form. The South has always been the testing ground for whether this country will honor democracy for everyone or only for some. From Jim Crow-era poll taxes and literacy tests to modern voting restrictions such as voter ID laws and aggressive gerrymandering, the basic mechanics of voter suppression have evolved but the underlying effect has remained the same: limiting Black political participation and, with it, political influence. The Voting Rights Act was meant to break that cycle. Weakening it does not make democracy stronger. It makes the old hierarchy easier to maintain.

And the stakes extend beyond Black communities alone. When voting rights are curtailed, entire regions suffer. Small towns and rural communities often lose leverage when they have less political representation, which can shape how state investment is allocated and how effectively local concerns are heard. The Council of Economic Advisors’ research on rural America shows that these communities face shrinking economic opportunity, weaker infrastructure and thinner access to essential services, while housing affordability has deteriorated faster there than in suburban or urban areas.

If this country is serious about addressing the affordability crisis, it cannot simultaneously undermine the people who are most likely to demand relief. If we want lower costs, stronger small businesses and more stable communities, we should be expanding voting participation, not shrinking it. Because when Black voters in the South are denied full power, the harm does not stop at the ballot box. It shows up in the price of groceries, the closure of local businesses, the lack of investment in neighborhoods and the widening gap between those who can shape the future and those forced to endure it.