Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-1257_g204.pdf
Page Number: 55

Cite as:  594 U. S. ____ (2021) 

11 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

laws.  In recent months, State after State has taken up or 
enacted  legislation  erecting  new  barriers  to  voting.    See 
Brennan  Center  for  Justice,  Voting  Laws  Roundup:  May 
2021  (online  source  archived  at  www.supremecourt.gov) 
(compiling legislation).  Those laws shorten the time polls 
are  open,  both  on  Election  Day  and  before.    They  impose 
new prerequisites to voting by mail, and shorten the win-
dows  to  apply  for  and  return  mail  ballots.    They  make  it 
harder to register to vote, and easier to purge voters from 
the rolls.  Two laws even ban handing out food or water to 
voters standing in line.  Some of those restrictions may be 
lawful under the Voting Rights Act.  But chances are that 
some have the kind of impact the Act was designed to pre-
vent—that they make the political process less open to mi-
nority voters than to others. 
  So the Court decides this Voting Rights Act case at a per-
ilous moment for the Nation’s commitment to equal citizen-
ship.  It decides this case in an era of voting-rights retrench-
ment—when too many States and localities are restricting 
access to voting in ways that will predictably deprive mem-
bers of minority groups of equal access to the ballot box.  If 
“any  racial  discrimination  in  voting  is  too  much,”  as  the 
Shelby County Court recited, then the Act still has much to 
do.  570 U. S., at 557.  Or more precisely, the fraction of the 
Act remaining—the Act as diminished by the Court’s hand.  
Congress never meant for Section 2 to bear all of the weight 
of the Act’s commitments.  That provision looks to courts, 
not to the Executive Branch, to restrain discriminatory vot-
ing practices.  And litigation is an after-the-fact remedy, in-
capable of providing relief until an election—usually, more 
than  one  election—has  come  and  gone.    See  id.,  at  572 
(Ginsburg, J., dissenting).  So Section 2 was supposed to be 
a  back-up,  for  all  its  sweep  and  power.    But  after  Shelby 
County, the vitality of Section 2—a “permanent, nationwide 
ban on racial discrimination in voting”—matters more than 
ever.    Id.,  at  557  (majority  opinion).    For  after  Shelby