Voting rights ruling is a ‘devastating’ and personal blow, Rep. Simon, Mayor Lee say

It was a sunny summer day on the White House lawn.

President George W. Bush spoke into the microphone, as the people standing around him — including relatives of Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer — beamed.

“In four decades since the Voting Rights Act was first passed, we’ve made progress toward equality, yet the work for a more perfect union is never-ending,” Bush said, recounting the historic civil rights march in Selma and the violent response to it that led to the 1965 law. 

“Today, we renew a bill that helped bring a community on the margins into the life of American democracy. My administration will vigorously enforce the provisions of this law, and we will defend it in court,” he said. Then Bush picked up a pen and signed the 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, to applause.

Barbara Lee was in attendance that day. A member of the Congressional Black Caucus at the time, she had worked on the legislation to renew the landmark protections for minority voters.

There was “broad bipartisan support” then, Mayor Lee recalled last week.

So she was “shocked but not surprised” last Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key section of the Voting Rights Act.

The ruling concludes a battle over Louisiana’s congressional districts map. In 2022, a federal judge ruled that the first map the state had adopted, which had only one majority-Black district out of the six total, was a violation of the Voting Rights Act’s prohibition on discrimination in voting. In response, state leaders drew a new map creating two majority-Black districts. Then a group, describing themselves as “non-African American” voters, sued in 2024, arguing the new map discriminated against them. A panel of three federal judges ruled in their favor. Then the Supreme Court took up the case. 

The 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court struck down the two-district map, ruling that only maps proven to show “intentional discrimination” violated the act. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said redistricting like what happened in Louisiana was unconstitutional gerrymandering. 

President Donald Trump called the decision a “big win” preserving the intent of the act.

Voting rights advocates and liberal lawmakers immediately condemned the ruling. They fear the decision will give way to broad redistricting, especially in the South, that decreases hard-fought minority representation everywhere from county boards to Congress. 

According to Sherrilyn Ifill, a Howard University law professor, Black elected officials in the U.S. rose from 1,500 in 1970 to over 10,000 today — growth she attributes to the Voting Rights Act.

Analysts are split on whether the ruling could affect California’s district lines in the future. But Louisiana already suspended its in-progress primary election so state leaders could redraw maps there. 

For Barbara Lee and Lateefah Simon, the court ruling is personal

Oakland’s current and previous federal representatives both blasted the Supreme Court ruling — and said it was personal to them.

Lee grew up in segregated Texas, where the adults in her family were forced to pay a poll tax until they moved to California in 1960. (Poll taxes were finally abolished through the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 24th Amendment the year before.)

Even in California, at San Fernando High School, Lee was prohibited from becoming a cheerleader in high school, until she brought in the NAACP for support. The school held an election — the first of many Lee would go on to win in her life — and she became the campus’s first Black cheerleader. 

“I come from that history,” Lee told The Oaklandside last week. “I know people don’t want to look backward.” 

The Voting Rights Act, she said, has been “one of the most effective tools we’ve had to prevent racial discrimination.”

“I’ve monitored elections all around the world, where we’ve been promoting democracy — in Nigeria, South Africa,” Lee said. “I’m sure they’re appalled.”

To Lee, the court ruling is the latest element of an “extreme agenda” she’s watched President Donald Trump, a conservative-majority court, and allies roll out, touching everything from reproductive and labor rights to enfranchisement. “He puts people in the House who are afraid to speak out about what’s wrong in this country, in terms of erosion of voting rights,” she said.

The mayor said she’ll continue to ensure there are protected voting booths and clear election information distributed in Oakland and the county.

Lee’s successor, Rep. Lateefah Simon, called last week’s decision “devastating.” Simon represents California’s District 12, which stretches from Albany to San Leandro and includes all of Oakland.

Minutes after the court ruling, Simon entered the weekly Congressional Black Caucus meeting and “we went straight into strategizing,” she said.

There are over 60 members in the caucus, including a number of older representatives who’ve lived through tough history, and Simon could see “the pain in their faces.”

Simon’s grandmother could not vote in Jim Crow Arkansas, and both sides of her family eventually fled to California from the South.

One of the most pressing tasks, Simon said, is pursuing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. That bill would create a process for federal intervention in redistricting if state and local governments have a documented history of discrimination. A previous Supreme Court ruling, in 2013, struck down a provision of the Voting Rights Act that required federal approval for such redistricting, but said Congress could come up with a new formula to determine oversight. The bill has failed to pass in the House so far.

Even if it does, it will land on the desk of a president who may be unlikely to sign it.

“We can’t suspect or anticipate change purely coming from the complex in DC and the White House,” said Simon. “I am ready and prepared to continue to work alongside civil rights organizations, movement organizations, and my colleagues in Congress.”

The congresswoman said she’d been listening to civil rights songs, like Ella’s Song by Sweet Honey in the Rock, since the Supreme Court issued its decision.

The ruling won’t have an immediate effect on California’s district lines. But some analysts think it could open the door to stronger challenges down the line. Last fall, voters approved Proposition 50, a Gov. Gavin Newsom-backed initiative to redraw the state’s districts to give Democrats more seats. The proposition was a direct response to a Texas redistricting that favored Republicans. 

“While we won’t have a direct effect here in D12, as it relates to voting rights, there is a larger attack and betrayal at play,” said Simon. 

She noted that a resolution last month to invoke the War Powers Act to force the withdrawal of troops from Iran failed in the House by just one vote. Any slight change in representation and districts across the country can have impacts felt by everyone.

After Trump is out of office, Simon said, “we’re going to have to build back this country by the studs.”