State Senator Derek Mallow

🚨 URGENT: Our democracy is under attack.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais threatens Black voters and decades of progress. But we’re not backing down.

Join our emergency virtual briefing tonight at 7:30 p.m. ET to understand what’s at stake and how we fight back.

Featuring:
• Derrick Johnson, NAACP President & CEO
• Kristen Clarke, NAACP General Counsel

Register for tonight’s call. https://naacpheadquarters.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_idbHh8oHQ9qSfLJLVZcyqQ #/registration

Statement from Senator Derek Mallow on Louisiana v. Callais

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais and with it, effectively gutted the core protections of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

I want to be clear about what happened today: the Court did not strike Section 2 from the books, but they eviscerated what the law actually does. For sixty years, Section 2 stood as the guardrail against racial discrimination in our elections.

Today, that guardrail was torn down.

I represent the 2nd Senate District of Georgia. Savannah, a city built on the backs and the prayers of Black men and women who were never fully counted, never fully heard, and never fully protected at the ballot box. This decision hits home. Because the people that I fight for every single day now have fewer tools to fight back.

What the Court has done is make it almost impossible to prove a voting rights violation without showing intentional discrimination something Congress specifically rejected when it strengthened this law in 1982. Congress looked at what the Court had done, and the decided to stop what has happened today. So let me be clear today’s majority on the Supreme Court has now dressed up this injustice in constitutional language, but we know what it is. We have to call a spade a spade.

This is not justice. This is an injustice to black folks all across America.

And let us be honest about what comes next. Analysts are already warning that this ruling could strip Black representation from as many as 15 congressional seats currently held by members of Congress who look like the communities they serve. That is not a projection that is a plan.

Partisan gerrymandering was already shielded from federal courts. Now racial gerrymandering hides behind the same veil. The two together leave Black voters with nowhere to turn.

I was raised by my grandmother. She did not have the luxury of political theory or legal strategy. She had her faith, prayer, and her belief that the generation coming up behind her deserved better than what she had been given.

She knelt and prayed so that I could rise, and she stood back up so I could see the world from her shoulders. That is what we are called to do today. We will not stay down.

We will stand back up and ensure black voters have the chance to be represented come hell or high water by doing what we can do to ensure the state of Georgia does not allow this practice to happen. We need to amend the state constitution to prohibit racial gerrymandering to ensure this does not happen here in Georgia.