“When I came to the law,” she mused, hands clasped behind her back, pensive and measured as she spoke to a lecture hall full of first-year law students, “legal rights for women wasn’t exactly settled law.”
“Came to the law?” I heard what I heard on that morning. While I learned inside my head, watching my sister graduate from law school, that I wanted to practice law, I never thought of the law in that respect. Came to the law.
For her, the practice of law was a calling the way a person can be called to run for office, or to parenthood, or to law enforcement, or even to preach the Gospel.
By the time we witnessed her arrival to the law, before her life and work intersected with ours in the early morning, Civ Pro, she had already been appointed by President Jimmy Carter to enforce the nation’s labor laws.
She had already battled against ill-fitting three-piece suits, terrible shag haircuts, cologne that smelled like lazy pickup lines, and the patriarchy in the Supreme Court, in American workplaces, and I firmly suspected that she had also fought in some streets and back alleys, attempting to liberate and equalize women. I still kind of believe that.
I believed that because in small groups and individual conversations, she jarred my complacency. This Anglo woman, who resembled an exclamation point with a short bob and ankle-length cotton skirts, told me with measured, grammatically beautiful urgency that I belonged to a group of Americans who have had to wait for a court to rule on their marriages, their ability to reside in safe neighborhoods, their lives.
I remember her telling me that for some people in this country, the law was not simply theoretical; it had real implications. So, she said, I should not just know the law well, but always be ready to use it to fight back against people or institutions that move to restrict my rights.
I carried her words with me out of those conversations and into a nation whose Supreme Court has done just that.
The Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, delivered on April 29, 2026, has been lauded in some conservative circles as a victory against racial gerrymandering.
Yet, for many Christians committed to racial justice, the ruling feels less like a triumph of constitutional colorblindness and more like a devastating abandonment of our neighbors. By dismantling the core protections of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and signaling that partisan gerrymandering can mask racial discrimination, the Court has not just interpreted the law; it has, in the view of many, actively enabled the marginalization of Black voters in Louisiana and across the South.
As followers of people of reason and even followers of Christ, we are called to a higher standard than merely complying with the letter of a newly narrowed law. We are called to love our neighbors and to seek justice for the marginalized (Micah 6:8). The Callais decision, which allows for the dismantling of a second majority-Black district, directly conflicts with these fundamental tenets.
The Court’s majority argument — that creating a second majority-Black district constitutes “unconstitutional racial gerrymandering” — relies on the assumption that we live in a post-racial society where race no longer impacts access to the ballot. However, the reality on the ground, as evidenced by decades of litigation, shows that race and voting preferences in Louisiana are deeply intertwined.
For Christians, the “blindness” of this ruling is not a virtue. It is willful ignorance of the “long, hard race for freedom” that Black and brown communities have had to run, as noted by the AME Church Commission on Social Action. To argue that we must ignore race in mapping is to ignore the historical reality that race has always been used to restrict power. Ignoring the problem does not fix it; it merely hides it behind the veneer of “partisan political objectives”.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was not merely a political achievement; it was a moral victory, often led by people of faith who saw the denial of voting rights as a sin against human dignity. When the Supreme Court weakens this, they are dismantling a, “crowning achievement of the Civil Rights Movement.”
The Callais decision undermines this sacred heritage. By allowing states to dilute the voices of Black communities, the Court makes it easier for political power to be concentrated in the hands of a few, rather than representing the diversity of the people. This is a fundamental injustice. As the Interfaith Alliance noted, when access to the ballot is restricted, the conditions necessary for true religious liberty are diminished.
This ruling brings to mind the “culture of death” rhetoric sometimes used in other contexts — the slow, calculated dismantling of life-affirming structures, replaced by those that favor power over people. However, instead of despairing, the Christian response must be one of righteous action and vigilant stewardship of democracy.
We must support Black churches and community leaders in their efforts to mobilize voters despite these roadblocks. We must advocate for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the protections this Court has stripped away.
The Louisiana v. Callais decision is a call to action. It is a moment for Christians to stop siding with the convenience of political power and start standing with the communities whose voices are being silenced.
Our witness demands it.
