WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court issued a decision in April 2026 regarding the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Following the ruling, Republican-led state legislatures eliminated majority-Black congressional districts. The 2026 decision follows a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that also concerned the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The 2013 decision allowed states and counties with a history of discriminatory voting rules to make changes without prior approval from the Department of Justice. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the 2013 decision.

Jimmie Lee Jackson, a Black church deacon, was shot in the stomach by a state trooper in 1965 while trying to shield his mother and grandfather. Jackson was 26 years old at the time of his death. Viola Liuzzo died on March 25, 1965, on an Alabama highway between Selma and Montgomery while driving civil rights protesters.

Liuzzo participated in a portion of the second Selma to Montgomery march and helped drive civil rights protesters in the Black Belt region of Alabama. Anthony Liuzzo, whose mother died in 1965, reflected on the recent Supreme Court decision, stating, "My mother's blood is on that bill. We were always proud of that, and now it's gone."

Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney vanished in Mississippi in June 1964 while investigating a bombing at a Black church. Their bodies were found weeks later, buried in an earthen dam in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Schwerner was 24, Goodman was 20, and Chaney was 21 at the time of their deaths. "Our family was very out front in the media that the only reason there was international attention was two of the young men were white. Had all three of those young men been Black, they would have ended up absent from our history and our narrative," said Cassie Schwerner, executive director of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility.

In September 1963, Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Morris Wesley died in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Nearly two dozen people were injured in the explosion. Three members of the Ku Klux Klan were convicted years later for the bombing. Tamara Orange expressed relief that her father, James Orange, and others who died in the civil rights movement, were not alive to witness the decision. "Relief that my dad is not here to see that; that Jimmie Lee Jackson is not here to see it; that Viola Liuzzo is not here to see it," Orange said. She added, "I'm relieved for them because to me, it's as though the sacrifices that were made were done in vain."