Courts protect and threaten democracy, depending on if Democrats like the ruling

Nine days earlier, the Supreme Court handed down Louisiana v. Callais, 6-3, invalidating Louisiana’s 2024 congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, held that the Constitution “almost never permits” government to discriminate on the basis of race, and that the Voting Rights Act did not require the state to create an additional majority-black district. Justice Elena Kagan dissented, declaring Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act “all but a dead letter.” Democrats called it a catastrophe for democracy. Courts, suddenly, were the enemy.

Contrast that with California in 1994. Voters approved Proposition 187 — the Save Our State initiative — 59% to 41%, directing the state to deny nonemergency benefits to illegal immigrants. Federal courts blocked it within days. Democratic Gov. Gray Davis withdrew the state’s appeal by 1999. Progressive leaders called it a constitutional correction. Not one invoked the sacred will of the people.

The scorecard is not hard to read. Courts are celebrated when they stop voter majorities that Democrats dislike. Courts become threats to democracy when they enforce rules Democrats violated. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was sacrosanct until it produced maps a federal court found unconstitutional. Virginia’s amendment procedures were a technicality until they blocked a gerrymander designed to flip congressional seats. And Proposition 187 was an affront to constitutional order — until you noticed it passed with a larger majority than most things Democrats actually defend.

Both states had built institutional safeguards against exactly this manipulation. Virginia voters approved an independent bipartisan redistricting commission in 2020 by 72%. California created its Citizens Redistricting Commission by initiative in 2008. Democrats dismantled both when the national redistricting arms race made them inconvenient. California voters ratified Proposition 50 in November 2025 with 64.4%, handing mapmaking back to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) legislature. Virginia Democrats ran the same play. Courts caught them.

What makes this corrosive is not the partisanship, which is as old as the republic, but the pretense. The coalition mourning Callais as the death of minority representation had no comparable grief when California’s 59% majority was told its vote did not count. The same attorneys general who invoked voter sovereignty in Virginia showed no reverence for the 72% who created the commission they later dismantled. The Constitution does not come with a partisan override switch, though both parties have spent years pretending otherwise.

Real accountability requires insulating redistricting commissions from legislative override, absent a fully compliant referendum. It requires enforcing constitutional amendment procedures regardless of political urgency. And it requires applying the same standard to Callais as to Shelby County — courts either enforce constitutional limits on racial classification or they do not, without a carve-out for whichever party holds the majority at the time.

Californians know what happens when that standard collapses. A 59% majority was told its vote did not count, and California has been a one-party state in nearly every meaningful sense ever since. Virginians are watching their courts decide whether the same lesson applies to them.

Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a BS from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, UPENN, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy.