Congress has refused to do anything to restore the law’s protections, so litigation has remained the only real recourse for advocates trying to stop these voter suppression tactics more and more state legislatures have been adopting.

In Virginia, a three-judge federal court held that legislators racially gerrymandered Democratic Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott’s district, purposefully packing far more blacks into it than necessary. On appeal to the Supreme Court, prominent conservative lawyer Mike Carvin argued repeatedly that the legislators packed black voters for partisan reasons, not racial ones, as if that makes a difference.