November 18, 2025

In the spring of 2021, Democrats were challenging an Arizona voting restriction law. During oral argument, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked the lawyer representing the Republican Party, “Why is the RNC in the case?” More specifically, the conservative justice wanted to know “the interest of the Arizona RNC here in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct voter ballot–disqualification rules on the books.”

Without missing a beat, the GOP attorney responded: “Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game. And every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretation of Section 2 hurts us.” Put simply, fortifying barriers to voting for minorities was a sufficient reason for the RNC to send its lawyers to the Supreme Court.

Eight years earlier, North Carolina Republicans had changed their voting laws — but only after reviewing racial data to determine which changes would harm Black voters and which would merely inconvenience white voters. They adopted all of the former and none of the latter, in what the federal court of appeals described as “target[ing] African Americans with almost surgical precision.”

It is against this historical backdrop that the Supreme Court is now considering two cases this term that could significantly alter election rules in ways calculated to help the GOP and white voters at the expense of minority voters and Democrats. And once again, Republicans are back in the high court to win their zero-sum game.

The first case is the Louisiana redistricting dispute, argued last term and reargued last month. After the state was successfully sued for violating the federal voting rights of its Black citizens, its legislature adopted a new map. That map, which created a second Black opportunity district, was then challenged by white voters who now claim they are the victims of unconstitutional racial discrimination.

What should have been laughed out of court — and was dismissed by the trial court — has now become a serious threat to the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts assured us that when it came to racial discrimination in voting, “times had changed.” The idea that the crown jewel of American democracy could meet its end at the hands of white voters in Louisiana is a sad testament to how much the clock has turned backwards in 2025.

If Republicans succeed in sidelining the Voting Rights Act, it will pave the way for massive mid-cycle redistricting targeting districts that currently allow minorities to elect their candidates of choice. Estimates for how many Democratic seats Republicans could flip to safe, white GOP districts range from 12 to 20.

The second case is even more absurd than the first — but no less dangerous. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have laws allowing mail-in ballots that are voted and postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrive via the U.S. Postal Service in the days that follow.

For the last five years, I have been battling Republicans in court over post-Election Day allowances to ensure lawful voters are not disenfranchised because of slow mail service. Until last year, Republicans had consistently lost this argument — no judge had struck down one of these laws. That changed when the ultra-conservative Fifth Circuit agreed with the RNC and blocked a Mississippi law giving voters a five-day grace period for postmarked ballots to arrive.

Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the RNC’s challenge to that law later this term. The stakes could not be higher.

The Republican Party’s real goal has nothing to do with Mississippi and is not limited to ballots received after Election Day, but postmarked beforehand. Rather, this is an effort to establish a foothold for a fringe legal theory that could eventually be used to threaten all mail-in and early in-person voting.

Republicans know exactly what they are doing in these cases. Speculation that they might simply be waging an ideological battle — and that it could backfire politically — is either dangerous wishful thinking or uninformed.

They are playing a zero-sum game and disenfranchising lawful Democratic voters is how they win. Targeting minority voters is their highest priority. Republicans know their policies are unpopular. They know they cannot attract more voters to their cause. Their only chance is to rig elections through gerrymandering, voter suppression and election subversion.

The fight ahead is difficult, but protecting free and fair elections is easy. If Republicans win even once, they entrench minority rule. If we win, we preserve free and fair elections for another election cycle. This is hardly a fair fight. But it is a fight we cannot walk away from.