Supreme Court Ruling on Voting Rights Renews Calls for Congressional Action

Why it matters locally: The Supreme Court's ruling on voting rights and the potential for federal legislative action could significantly impact Alabama's redistricting processes and future elections, particularly concerning the fairness of congressional and state legislative maps.

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# Supreme Court Ruling on Voting Rights Renews Calls for Congressional Action The Supreme Court's April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais restricted a provision of the Voting Rights Act, allowing states including Louisiana and Tennessee to pursue redistricting efforts. The decision sparked renewed calls from voting rights advocates for Congress to ban mid-decade map drawing and partisan gerrymandering. These appeals highlight a constitutional principle often overlooked: Congress retains the power to counteract Supreme Court decisions through legislation or constitutional amendment. Research on statutory responses to Court rulings shows that Congress frequently employed this power before the practice declined substantially after 1998. Congress can pass new laws addressing the statute a decision interpreted, or it can propose a constitutional amendment. An amendment requires approval from two-thirds of both the House and Senate, followed by ratification from at least 38 states. However, capacity and action differ considerably. In 2025, Congress cast 362 votes, the second-lowest total in 25 years, according to The New York Times. The 118th Congress, serving from January 2023 through January 2025, enacted 274 laws—the fewest passed by Congress since the Civil War, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. ## Past Congressional Responses Congress has overturned or circumvented major Supreme Court decisions on several occasions. Three examples illustrate how lawmakers have responded to rulings on race, religion, and workplace discrimination. ### The 13th and 14th Amendments In 1857, the Supreme Court decided Dred Scott v. Sandford, holding that Dred Scott, an enslaved man who had spent time in free territory, remained enslaved. The Court further ruled that African Americans—whether enslaved or free—were not and could not become citizens. The Court also declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. Four years later, the Civil War began. Congress passed the 13th Amendment during the conflict, which abolished slavery throughout the United States. States ratified it in December 1865, about eight months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered. The following year, Congress passed the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed citizenship to all persons born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. The amendment also prohibited states from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying equal protection of the laws. Three-fourths of states ratified the amendment by July 1868. Together, these amendments directly overturned the Dred Scott decision by ending slavery and establishing citizenship rights for African Americans. Implementation of these protections, however, required additional litigation, legislation, and executive action spanning decades. ### The Religious Freedom Restoration Act In 1990, the Supreme Court decided Employment Division v. Smith, a case involving Alfred Smith and Galen Black, who had consumed peyote during a Native American Church ceremony. The men were fired from their jobs at a private drug rehabilitation organization and denied unemployment benefits because Oregon's Department of Human Resources deemed their termination work-related misconduct. Smith and Black sued, arguing the First Amendment protected their religious practice. They won before Oregon's state courts, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that Oregon had not violated the First Amendment by enforcing its controlled substances law prohibiting peyote. The Smith ruling abandoned the compelling interest test previously used in free exercise cases. Under that test, the government had to demonstrate that a law interfering with religious practice served a compelling purpose and that no less restrictive alternative existed. After Smith, the free exercise clause offered no protection from neutral, generally applicable laws—those applying to everyone without targeting a specific faith. Religious organizations objected strongly to the decision. By summer 1990, Congress began considering legislation to restore the compelling interest test. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed in 1993 with support spanning both parties and across religious denominations. RFRA's statutory text explicitly criticized the Smith ruling, stating that neutral laws "may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise." The law restored the ability of people of faith to challenge any law burdening their religious practice, requiring the government to show that granting a religious exemption would undermine the policy's purpose. The congressional response remained incomplete. In 1997, the Supreme Court decided City of Boerne v. Flores, holding that RFRA did not apply to state actions. Congress succeeded in overturning Smith only as applied to federal law. ### The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act Lilly Ledbetter spent 19 years at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company before learning she earned less than men performing the same work. After retiring in 1998, she sued the company for violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination based on sex. A jury awarded her more than $3 million, but an appellate court overturned the verdict, finding her claims filed too late. The Supreme Court affirmed that decision in 2007. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion that the filing deadline did not reset each time Ledbetter received a paycheck, but rather started when the salary decision was made. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented alongside three other justices. She noted that pay discrimination often occurs in small increments and remains hidden from the affected employee for years. Ginsburg argued the ruling contradicted Congress's intent in passing Title VII. In her closing, she wrote: "The ball is in Congress' court." Ledbetter met with congressional leaders to advocate for legislative action. Less than two years after the May 2007 decision, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in January 2009. The law amended Title VII to clarify that the deadline for challenging unequal pay resets each time an employer pays compensation. ## Recent Congressional Gridlock In recent years, lawmakers have introduced legislation responding to major rulings, though these measures have differed substantially from the examples above. Following Supreme Court decisions on abortion rights and presidential immunity, Democrats introduced bills designed to undo the rulings' effects. These proposals lacked Republican support and faced long odds in a divided Congress. With current levels of congressional productivity and partisan division, a legislative response to Louisiana v. Callais or other recent decisions appears unlikely in the near term.