Stop Spending Your Money to Fund the End of Black Voting Power

On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States did something that legal scholars are now calling the effective end of multiracial democracy in America.

In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court's Republican supermajority gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — the single most important federal protection against racially discriminatory election maps. The case was Louisiana v. Callais. The result was the dismantling of 61 years of civil rights law in a single morning.

As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson: "Today's decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter."

She was not being dramatic. She was being precise.

Section 1: What the Court Actually Did and Why It Matters

To understand what happened, you need to know what Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was designed to do.

After generations of poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and outright violence designed to prevent Black Americans from voting, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Section 2 specifically prohibited any voting practice or procedure that results in the denial or abridgement of the right to vote on account of race. That included the drawing of electoral maps designed to dilute the voting power of communities of color, a practice called racial gerrymandering.

For six decades, Section 2 was the mechanism that allowed Black communities to go to court and say: you drew these lines to drown out our votes, and that is illegal.

Louisiana v. Callais killed that mechanism. Here is how.

Louisiana's Black population makes up roughly one-third of the state. For years, Louisiana maintained only one majority-Black congressional district out of six. In 2022, a federal court found that this violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and ordered Louisiana to create a second majority-Black district. Louisiana did so. Then a group of white plaintiffs sued, arguing the new map was itself an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Supreme Court agreed with them.

The ruling did two devastating things simultaneously. First, it struck down Louisiana's majority-Black district. Second, and more importantly, it imposed new evidentiary hurdles that make it nearly impossible for any community of color to win a Section 2 case going forward. Under the new framework, states can now defend virtually any racially discriminatory map simply by claiming their motivation was partisan, not racial — even though, as the Campaign Legal Center noted, race and partisanship are often impossible to disentangle, especially in the South.

In plain English: states can now draw maps that wipe out Black representation, call it "partisan strategy," and the courts will let it stand.

FairVote called it "a ruling that dismantles landmark protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and undermines bedrock principles of American democracy."

That is not opinion. That is the documented legal reality of what happened on April 29, 2026.

Section 2: The Stampede

The states were ready. In some cases, they had the maps drawn before the ink was dry.

Within days of the ruling, Republican-controlled legislatures across the country called special sessions and sprinted to take advantage. Here is the state-by-state record:

Tennessee

Governor Lee called an emergency special session. Legislators passed a new map destroying Memphis's 9th Congressional District — the state's only Democratic-held, majority-Black district. That district was 60.2% Black, representing 466,000 Black residents in a city where Black people make up the majority of the population. Tennessee as a whole is 17% Black. The district was cracked into three separate rural-white districts. State Representative Justin Pearson, a Black legislator whose own constituents were erased by the map, called it "a political lynching."

Louisiana

Governor Jeff Landry suspended the state's May 16 primary immediately after the Callais ruling dropped, halting an active election so the maps could be redrawn. The two majority-Black districts being targeted are Louisiana's 2nd District, covering New Orleans, which is 50.4% Black, and the 6th District stretching from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, which is 54.4% Black. These two districts represent the only meaningful congressional representation for Louisiana's 33% Black population. Louisiana is now expected to revert to its traditional November jungle primary format to buy time for a new map to take effect.

Florida

Governor Ron DeSantis, who publicly admitted he had advance knowledge of the Callais ruling, immediately called a special session and signed a 24-to-4 congressional map on May 4 — targeting four Democratic incumbents. Kathy Castor's Tampa district (FL-14) was 17.7% Black before the redraw — the new map stripped out East Tampa's historically Black neighborhoods, dropping the Black share to 11.5% and dispersing more than 47,000 Black residents into surrounding Republican districts. Darren Soto's Orlando district (FL-9) is 9.3% Black with a 51.8% Hispanic majority — a majority-minority district being targeted for elimination. Lois Frankel's West Palm Beach district and Debbie Wasserman Schultz's Fort Lauderdale district (FL-25), which is 15% Black, are both being restructured to favor Republican candidates. As Castor herself put it: "You have a gerrymander on top of a gerrymander." Three separate lawsuits have now been filed against the map under the state constitution's own anti-gerrymandering provisions.

Alabama

On May 11, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Alabama Republicans to immediately pursue a map retaining only one majority-Black district — despite a prior federal court order requiring the state to add majority-Black representation. The district being targeted for elimination is Alabama's 2nd Congressional District, which is 48.9% Black— nearly a majority — and was only created after the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling in Allen v. Milligan forced Alabama to stop diluting Black voting power. Alabama as a whole is 26% Black. Alabama has also begun a separate redraw of its state senate maps, meaning the gerrymandering extends beyond congressional seats.

Mississippi

Actively pursuing new congressional maps to eliminate minority representation statewide. Mississippi has the highest Black population percentage of any state in the nation at 38% Black, yet its congressional delegation has been structured to minimize Black representation. The primary has already been held and redistricting efforts are advancing in the legislature.

South Carolina

State House passed a resolution on May 6 to pursue redistricting after the close of the regular session. South Carolina is 25% Black. Efforts are actively advancing.

Georgia

Despite earlier signals that Georgia might wait until 2028, Georgia is now actively advancing redistricting efforts post-Callais. Georgia is 33% Black — one of the highest percentages in the nation — and all five Democratic-held seats are majority-Black by population, making them direct targets. A Georgia Supreme Court election on May 19 was an early test of whether the judicial infrastructure enabling these maps will hold.

Virginia

This is the story that reveals exactly how one-sided this fight has become. Virginia is 20% Black, with 1.76 million Black residents. Virginia Democrats, facing Republican gerrymanders across the South, successfully organized a voter referendum to authorize new congressional maps that would have expanded Democratic representation. More than 3 million Virginians voted on it. The Virginia Supreme Court then threw the referendum out entirely, ruling the process was improper. Democrats appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for emergency relief. The Supreme Court refused, ending the fight. Multiple Democratic candidates who had launched campaigns under the proposed new districts immediately suspended their campaigns. Republicans blocked a voter-approved democratic remedy in Virginia while simultaneously enabling Republican gerrymanders across the South. The rules, it is now clear, apply only in one direction.

Texas

Trump personally directed Texas Republicans to conduct a mid-decade redistricting in summer 2025 — before Callais — explicitly targeting five additional Republican seats by cracking apart Black and Latino communities. Texas is 12.8% Black — representing over 4.3 million Black residents, the largest Black population of any state by total count. The Supreme Court allowed the Texas maps to stand. Callais simply removed any remaining legal obstacles to more of the same.

Missouri

Republicans called a special session in August 2025 to split Kansas City into surrounding rural districts, eliminating Rep. Emanuel Cleaver's seat. Cleaver's district is 21.7% Black — representing Kansas City's historically Black communities that were built east of Troost Avenue, the dividing line that segregated the city for generations. The new map redraws that exact line, placing Black Kansas City neighborhoods into predominantly white rural districts. Cleaver called the choice to split along Troost "the most psychological, painful thing that happened, not just to me, but the African American community in Kansas City." Missouri is 11.7% Black. When 300,000 Missouri voters signed petitions to put the new map to a public referendum, Republican-aligned courts helped run out the filing deadline clock. The Missouri Supreme Court rejected two challenges in May 2026 and is scheduled to hear one final challenge on May 27.

North Carolina

New maps enacted in October 2025 by simple legislative majority, with no governor's veto available under state law. North Carolina is 22% Black, with 2.4 million Black residents. A federal court challenge failed. State Supreme Court elections in 2026 and 2028 could shift the court's composition and potentially reopen the fight.

Indiana

State House passed new maps in late 2025 targeting two additional Republican seats. Indiana is 10.4% Black, with Indianapolis's Black community among the primary targets of the map's new district lines.

The playbook is identical in every Republican-controlled state: find a city with a large Black population — Memphis, Kansas City, Houston, Jackson — crack it apart, and drown it in surrounding white rural districts until Black voters cannot elect a single representative of their choosing. The names of the cities change. The strategy does not.

And when Democrats tried to fight back, as Virginia did, with more than 3 million voters approving a redistricting referendum, the courts blocked them at every level, including the U.S. Supreme Court. The rules, it turns out, apply in only one direction.

A May 2026 YouGov survey found that 76% of Americans said partisan gerrymandering is unfair, 76% called it a major problem, and 69% said it should be illegal. None of that matters when the courts have been captured, the legislature is paralyzed, and the states drawing the maps are the same ones counting the votes.

This is not a regional quirk or a throwback to a Southern past. More than a quarter of all congressional seats in the United States have already been redrawn mid-decade. This is a nationally coordinated assault on representative democracy, directed from the White House and executed by Republican-controlled state legislatures from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes. And it is accelerating.

Section 3: Who Is Paying for All of This

Here is the part that most people do not know. The maps do not draw themselves. The special sessions do not fund themselves. The state legislators who vote for these maps, the governors who sign them, the Republican-aligned judges who dismiss the legal challenges; all of them are funded by a specific, documented network of corporate donors.

The central vehicle is the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) — the organization that has run the national Republican gerrymandering project since its 2010 Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP), which deliberately targeted state legislatures to secure Republican control over the redistricting process after that year's Census. It worked. Republicans drew the maps that have governed American politics ever since.

In the first quarter of 2025 alone, the RSLC raised a record $13 million. Over the 2023-2024 cycle, it raised $102 million. And the corporations writing the checks are not fringe players. They are brands you interact with every single day.

The documented corporate funders of the gerrymandering machine:

• Altria — maker of Marlboro cigarettes, Skoal smokeless tobacco, and the vape brand NJOY. The single largest corporate donor to the RSLC since 2010, contributing $6.9 million between January 2010 and June 2023. In the 2024 election cycle alone, Altria spent $11.4 million in total political contributions and $13.2 million in lobbying. Altria publicly claims that "voting is a foundational democratic process and should be a non-partisan issue." Its checkbook says otherwise.

  
  

• Reynolds American / British American Tobacco — makers of Newport, Camel, Pall Mall, and Lucky Strike cigarettes. The two companies gave a combined $7.6 million to the RSLC over the same period.

  
  

• Elevance Health (formerly Anthem) — one of the largest health insurance companies in the United States, operating under the Blue Cross Blue Shield name in many states. Donated $5.7 million to the RSLC.

  
  

• Devon Energy — a major oil and gas corporation headquartered in Oklahoma. Donated $2.7 million to the RSLC.

  
  

• AT&T — the nation's largest telecom company. Donated $1.6 million to the RSLC since 2010, and spent $5.95 million in total political contributions in the 2024 cycle alone, alongside $12 million in lobbying. AT&T has simultaneously issued public statements claiming to support voting rights and democratic participation.

  
  

• Comcast — the cable and media giant, parent company of NBCUniversal and MSNBC. Donated $2.1 million to the RSLC since 2010.

  
  

• Walmart — the world's largest retailer. Donated $1.8 million to the RSLC since 2010.

  
  

• Pfizer — one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. Donated $1.8 million to the RSLC since 2010.

  
  

• ExxonMobil — the oil and gas giant. Donated $1.5 million to the RSLC since 2010.

  
  

• Citigroup — one of the largest banks in the United States. Donated $1.6 million to the RSLC since 2010.

  
  

• Verizon — the nation's second-largest wireless carrier. Among the documented top corporate donors to anti-voting-rights legislators.

  
  

• Eli Lilly — one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. Donated over $100,000 to the RSLC in a single quarter in 2021.

  
  

• AstraZeneca — one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. Donated over $100,000 to the RSLC in a single quarter in 2021.

  
  

• Meta (Facebook) — donated $50,000 to the RSLC in 2021 while simultaneously claiming to support voting rights.

  
  

• Google — donated $20,000 to the RSLC in 2021.

  
  

• Microsoft — donated $222,000 to the RSLC since 2010 while publicly claiming to oppose voting restrictions.

  
  

• Amazon — donated $292,000 to the RSLC since 2010.

  
  

• General Motors — among the top corporate donors to state legislators backing voting restrictions.

  
  

• United Health Group — the nation's largest health insurer. Among the top corporate donors to state legislators backing voting restrictions.

In total, corporations have donated over $50 million to state lawmakers who backed restrictive voting measures and gerrymandered maps. Many of these same corporations issued public statements claiming to support democracy and racial equity. Their donations tell a different story. And the full current picture is even more hidden than these figures suggest: as of this writing, the RSLC is concealing the itemized donor list behind its $5.655 million in 2025-2026 fundraising, with the Center for Media and Democracy's IRS complaint still pending resolution.

And critically, the RSLC itself has been caught hiding who its donors are. In March 2026, the Center for Media and Democracy filed IRS complaints against both the RSLC and the Republican Governors Association for failing to itemize $64.2 million in donations in their 2025 year-end reports, money that is currently hidden from the public.

Section 4: What About People Inside These States Who Oppose This?

This is a fair question and it deserves a direct answer.

There are millions of people in Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Indiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina who are horrified by what their state governments are doing. Many of them are Black. Many of them are the exact voters being gerrymandered out of political existence. They did not choose this, and economic pressure will affect them too.

This tension is real. We will not pretend it is not.

But here is the hard truth: the courts have been captured. Congress is paralyzed. The DOJ under Trump has been redirected away from civil rights enforcement. The state legislatures doing this gerrymandering are doing it precisely because they believe there are no consequences because the maps they are drawing will protect their majorities from electoral accountability for the next decade.

When the NBA pulled its 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte over North Carolina's anti-transgender bathroom bill, the state reversed the law within a year. When the NFL threatened to pull the Super Bowl from Arizona in 1993 over the state's refusal to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Arizona voters passed the holiday. Economic pain produces political change when courts and legislatures will not.

Spending your boycott dollars intentionally — toward Black-owned businesses, toward advocacy organizations fighting the maps in real time, toward states that are protecting rather than dismantling voting rights — is not hypocrisy. It is precision.

Section 5: A Specific Guide

Stop buying from the corporations funding the machine.

Every time you pay your AT&T wireless bill, subscribe to Comcast internet, buy Marlboro or Newport cigarettes, purchase Eli Lilly or AstraZeneca medications through a non-generic option, renew your Anthem/Elevance health insurance without demanding your employer switch carriers, or fill your tank with Devon Energy fuel — you are sending money toward a corporate ecosystem that has spent tens of millions of dollars electing the legislators who are erasing Black political representation.

Where you have alternatives, use them. Where you can switch carriers, switch. Where you can demand your employer change insurance plans, demand it. Where you can choose generics over branded pharmaceuticals, choose them. Where you can use T-Mobile or a regional wireless carrier instead of AT&T or Verizon, make the switch.

Stop attending or watching sports events in gerrymandering states without accountability.

Refer to the full roster of SEC football programs, ACC teams, professional leagues, NASCAR tracks, and PGA Tour events in the offending states. Every dollar spent in those economic ecosystems flows into the local tax base of state governments actively dismantling Black voting rights.

Do not buy the ticket. Do not book the hotel. Do not eat at the sports bar that pays its lease on football Saturdays. And when these games are on television, understand that your viewership drives the advertising rates that fund the billion-dollar contracts that make these programs financially untouchable.

Stop attending conventions and conferences in these states without demanding accountability.

If your industry, your company, your professional association, or your faith community is booking an event in Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Kansas City, or Indianapolis, push back. Loudly. Ask the organizing committee why your group is spending money in a state that is actively stripping Black Americans of their political voice. Make them answer the question in public.

Section 6: A Citizen's Action Guide

Call Congress. Right now.

The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act has been reintroduced in the Senate by Senators Durbin and Warnock. It would restore the preclearance requirements that the Supreme Court gutted in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 and create new tools for challenging discriminatory maps. It needs 60 Senate votes to overcome a filibuster. Call your senators and make passage of this bill a condition of your support.

• The U.S. Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121

  
  

• Find your senators: senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

  
  

• Find your House representative: house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

When you call, say this: "I am calling to demand that Senator/Representative [name] support the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and take immediate action to address the Supreme Court's destruction of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais."

Track the legal fights in real time.

• Democracy Docket — run by voting rights attorney Marc Elias — tracks every redistricting challenge, every lawsuit, and every court ruling across the country in real time. Sign up for their alerts. Share their updates. Their work is the frontline documentation of this fight.

Support the organizations doing the legal and advocacy work.

• NAACP Legal Defense Fund — litigated Louisiana v. Callais and is already mounting the legal response to the ruling. Donate at naacpldf.org.

  
  

• Brennan Center for Justice — produced the definitive legal analysis of Callais and tracks redistricting nationally. Donate or subscribe to their work at brennancenter.org.

  
  

• Campaign Legal Center — submitted amicus briefs in Callais and is pursuing litigation across the affected states. Donate at campaignlegal.org.

  
  

• Southern Coalition for Social Justice — provides direct legal representation to communities of color fighting discriminatory maps in the South. Donate at southerncoalition.org.

  
  

• Fair Fight Action — founded by Stacey Abrams, focused on voter suppression in Georgia and beyond. Donate at fairfight.com.

  
  

• ACLU Voting Rights Project — has already filed challenges in multiple states since Callais. Donate at aclu.org.

Hold corporations publicly accountable.

Every corporation named in this article has a public-facing social media presence, a customer service line, a board of directors, and shareholders. Use all of them.

Post publicly and tag these companies by name. Tell AT&T, Walmart, Comcast, Elevance, Altria, Reynolds American, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, Citigroup, General Motors, Pfizer, United Health Group, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Verizon, Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon that you know what their money is funding. Tell them that their public statements about democracy and racial equity are meaningless while their PAC contributions and RSLC donations are paying for the maps that erase Black political representation. Demand that they publicly oppose Callais, publicly support the John Lewis Act, and immediately cease all funding to the RSLC and to any state legislator who has voted for a gerrymandered map since April 29, 2026.

Make noise about the boycott itself.

Share this article. Post it on every platform. Tag your representatives in it. Tag the #SEC. Tag the #NFL. Tag #NASCAR. Tag the #PGA Tour. Tag the corporations named above. Let them know that their silence about the systematic disenfranchisement of Black voters in their host states and in their donor portfolios is not a neutral position. It is a choice. And choices have consequences.

A Final Word

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was won through blood. It was won through the beating of John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was won through the murder of Medgar Evers, Viola Liuzzo, and Jimmie Lee Jackson. It was won through decades of organizing, marching, sitting-in, going to jail, and dying.

The Supreme Court spent the last thirteen years quietly dismantling it: Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee in 2021. And now Louisiana v. Callais in 2026.

And the corporations that sponsor the sporting events you watch on Saturdays, that process your wireless payments every month, that insure your family's health, that fill your car with gasoline — they have written tens of millions of dollars in checks to make sure the politicians carrying out this project stay in power.

As Justice Kagan wrote in dissent: "Today's decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter."

She said "all but." She was being generous. The states that sprinted to redraw their maps within 48 hours of the ruling were not being generous. They were being honest about what the Court had given them.

The only question left is what we do about it.

Your money is a vote. Cast it accordingly.

All sources linked within this article are from official court records, federal government sources, peer-reviewed reporting, and documented investigative journalism. We encourage readers to click every link, verify every claim, and make their own informed decisions.