A Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais sharply narrowed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, adding fuel to arguments that the court’s power needs balancing. The article connects Callais to other major 6–3 decisions limiting voting protections,
When the Supreme Court narrowed the reach of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais. the damage was immediate and precise: the provision long used to challenge racially discriminatory voting systems now offers only limited protection. Read alongside the court’s earlier Voting Rights Act rulings. the statute’s shield against discriminatory voting schemes looks thinner than it did before.
The decision also fits into a broader stretch of rulings that have. in the article’s framing. shifted power in American democracy away from elected branches and toward the courts. Callais isn’t treated as an isolated moment. It’s presented as part of a pattern in which protections for voting rights have been curtailed. while other fundamental rules governing abortion. gun regulation. climate policy. and presidential accountability have been reshaped.
In recent years. the court has eliminated a federal constitutional right to abortion. greatly narrowed the permissible scope of gun regulation. restricted the authority of federal agencies to address climate change. and established broad presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. Many of these decisions, the article notes, were issued by the same 6–3 majority. Together, they have rearranged what the federal government can do and where disputes ultimately land.
There’s a practical question driving the piece: what can be done, and how fast? The article’s answer is blunt. For most of the court’s consequential recent decisions, the usual tools for correction aren’t likely to produce timely or meaningful change.
Congress can sometimes respond when the Supreme Court’s result rests on statutory interpretation—by amending a statute or clarifying its terms. The article points to the Civil Rights Act of 1991 as an example of occasional success. when legislation overturned Supreme Court decisions that had narrowed workplace discrimination claims. But that route, it says, tends to be limited in scope. Statutory fixes are necessarily subject-matter specific, making them hard to use against a run of decisions spanning multiple domains.
Other rulings are grounded in constitutional interpretation. The article cites Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, decided in 2022, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. It also cites New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, decided in 2022, which narrowed the permissible scope of gun regulation. In those cases, legislation can’t simply override the outcome.
The remedies discussed in the article—an amendment requiring supermajorities in Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states; gradual change through court composition; and structural reforms such as ethics rules or term limits—are described as extraordinarily difficult. slow. uncertain. or contested.
There’s also a third category for decisions that nominally interpret statutes while being shaped by underlying constitutional concerns. Instead of striking statutes down. the court adopts what it calls a “saving construction” that keeps a law on the books while diminishing its practical effect. Callais is described as fitting this model. The article says Congress could attempt to respond by amending the statute or clarifying its terms. but any fix is likely to run into the same constitutional problems that led to the saving construction—giving the court another opening to narrow or invalidate the revised law.
That leaves the option the article argues is most consequential for speed: changing the size of the Supreme Court. The Constitution does not fix the number of justices. Congress has changed it before—six times in all—by increasing it five times and decreasing it twice. with the number of justices ranging from six to 10. The current size of nine dates to 1869, and the article describes it as the longest period in U.S. history without change.
Changing the court would not be risk-free. The article warns that expansion could lead to successive expansions or contractions by future Congresses, further straining public confidence in the institution.
But it argues the alternative carries a deeper threat: the status quo is a sustained pattern of decisions that fundamentally changes the legal landscape and displaces choices made by elected branches. It points to a decline in public confidence, citing a July 2025 Gallup poll that placed approval at 39%, down from 62% in 2001. It also draws a long historical comparison to Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857 and Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896—decisions it says persisted for decades, including most visibly and catastrophically through the long era of Jim Crow.
The point of the piece isn’t that one case demands a single remedy. It argues expansion should be understood as a response to a sustained run of decisions—and what that run suggests may come next. The article frames expansion as lawful and previously used. but says it would require electoral realignment. including majorities in both houses of Congress and a supportive president. It also notes that the timing of any such realignment is uncertain.
Still, the article concludes that expansion may be the only reform capable of producing timely change on a scale matching the court’s recent decisions.
Robert E. Lehrer, a retired Chicago attorney whose practice focused on plaintiffs’ civil rights litigation, is the author of the piece.
Supreme Court Louisiana v. Callais Voting Rights Act Section 2 Congress judicial power Robert E. Lehrer Dobbs v. Jackson Bruen presidential immunity climate change