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The Supreme Court Ruling Clears The Path For Politicians To Gerrymander Communities Of Color Into Silence
By Paul Adler, Esq.
On April 29, 2026, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling in Louisiana v. Callais that should alarm every American who cares about fair markets, strong communities, and an economy built on opportunity. In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court effectively rendered Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 a dead letter — gutting the most powerful federal tool we have had for sixty years to prevent racial discrimination in redistricting. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, the majority has made the provision “all but a dead letter.” I write this column not simply as a civil rights advocate, but as a commercial real estate professional who has spent decades watching what hate, division, and exclusion do to a community’s economic vitality. I am here to tell you: this ruling is not just a moral failure. It is a business catastrophe in the making.
Let’s start with a little history. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was born from the blood and sacrifice of the Civil Rights Movement. It was designed to ensure that no American’s voice could be diluted, suppressed, or gerrymandered into silence on account of race. For nearly four decades, Section 2 required that when a state has large, compact, and cohesive minority communities, those communities must be able to elect candidates of their choice. It was not a partisan provision. It was, quite simply, democracy working as promised.
That promise has now been broken. The Callais ruling effectively clears the path for politicians to gerrymander communities of color into silence — as long as they don’t say the quiet part out loud. As the Campaign Legal Center observed, the Court has signaled that racial discrimination in redistricting is permissible so long as it is dressed up as partisanship. This is not a technicality. This is a green light for the worst impulses in American politics.
Here in Rockland County, we know something about the cost of exclusion. I have written in this journal before about how antisemitism and racial prejudice undermine real estate values, deter business investment, and hollow out the quality of life that makes a community worth living in and worth investing in. The same logic applies here, on a national scale. When communities of color are silenced at the ballot box, they lose political power. When they lose political power, they lose access to public investment in their neighborhoods — schools, infrastructure, transportation, zoning. And when those neighborhoods deteriorate, the broader regional economy suffers. Businesses do not locate in communities defined by exclusion. Talent does not flow to places stained by inequality.
Since the Supreme Court’s earlier body blow to the VRA in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, at least 31 states have enacted 114 laws making it harder to vote, with the burden falling hardest on Black voters and other voters of color. This is not abstract data. These are real people whose participation in the democratic process has been systematically narrowed. And when people are shut out of democracy, they are shut out of the economy. A fractured, segregated society — even a subtly, legally engineered one — produces fragmented markets, reduced consumer bases, weakened civic institutions, and declining community investment. That is not a recipe for growth. That is a recipe for stagnation.
As a commercial real estate professional, I think constantly about what draws businesses and families to a community and what drives them away. I can tell you from direct experience: hate, exclusion, and the fear of a rigged system are powerful repellents. Companies seeking to expand or relocate consider quality of life, access to diverse talent, and the stability of local governance. A county or region that is perceived as hostile to communities of color — whether through rhetoric, zoning, or an engineered lack of political representation — loses out. Every time. Inclusive, equitable communities attract investment. Regressive, exclusionary communities drive it away.
I am a member of the Rockland League of Women Voters, and I take seriously the League’s long history of defending the integrity of the democratic process. The League has filed amicus briefs in this very case and has been unwavering in its position: weakening Section 2 to the point of inoperability sends a clear and chilling message — that racial discrimination in redistricting is acceptable as long as it is technically concealed. The League is right. Congress must now act. We need new federal voting rights legislation that restores and strengthens the protections that have been systematically dismantled. And we in the business community should be standing shoulder to shoulder with civil rights advocates to demand it.
I was inducted into the Rockland County Civil and Human Rights Hall of Fame because I have spent a career believing, deeply and practically, that building up human and civil rights lifts up all of us — as Americans, as neighbors, as people. Regressive rulings like Callais do the opposite. They cause us to descend. They fracture communities. They reintroduce the conditions for the kind of segregation and political powerlessness that we fought to overcome over generations of struggle. And they are bad for business.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was not a gift from the powerful to the powerless. It was won through sacrifice, sweat, and the conviction that America could be better than its worst moments. Sixty years later, the Court has chosen to unwind that victory. But the arc of the moral universe, as Dr. King reminds us, is long. It bends toward justice — if we are willing to bend it. The business community has a voice. Let’s use it.
Paul Adler is Chief Strategy Officer of Rand Commercial. paul.adler@randcommercial.com
