Are there hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants on Arizona’s voter rolls?

With its April ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court delivered yet another blow to the Voting Rights Act, specifically Section 2, which governs race in redistricting. The decision was sad and utterly predictable, but still nothing short of astonishing. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the Court’s conservative supermajority, stealthily setting aside 40 years of legal precedent under Section 2 largely on the belief that racism is a thing of the past and extreme partisan gerrymandering is, in effect, a fundamental right of state lawmakers. Callais had a tortured path to the Court, a feature of the case that has undoubtedly been eclipsed by the lawless nature of the ruling itself, all of which reveals that the Supreme Court represents the gravest threat to multiracial democracy in the United States. (I argued as much in a law review article, predicting the outcome and analyzing the ways a Court gone rogue might get to that ruling.)

What’s more? In recent years, the Court has played fast and loose with a “principle” purportedly meant to limit chaos around elections, known as Purcell. But instead of limiting chaos, the Court’s Purcell jurisprudence will hasten and aggrandize the already-problematic impact of the Callais ruling. As the nation’s redistricting wars inevitably continue — in this election season, the 2028 presidential campaign, and even the next decade — state courts can help stave off democratic erosion by resisting the urge to invoke Purcell.