Supreme Court's Impact on Voting Rights and GOP's Future

Chief Justice John Roberts surprised many by siding with Black voters in Alabama and upholding a key part of the Voting Rights Act, maintaining a framework for testing when a state legislature has drawn a racially biased map. However, his views on race will be further tested in a pair of college affirmative action cases. Roberts has a history of attempting to limit the reach of the VRA, but in the Alabama case, he endorsed the lower court findings and reaffirmed a standard drawn from a 1986 case, Thornburg v. Gingles. Kavanaugh joined Roberts' bottom-line but separated himself from some of his reasoning.