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In an article for MSNBC published Wednesday, legal analyst Jordan Rubin argued that conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of President Donald Trump, is driving a dangerous effort to limit voting rights, based on what Rubin calls an “unfounded insistence” that race-based remedies must have an expiration date.

Rubin warned that Kavanaugh’s position, voiced during oral arguments in a major voting rights case out of Louisiana on Wednesday, could pave the way for the Court to further dismantle the Voting Rights Act.

"The Supreme Court is on the verge of further limiting voting rights, thanks in part to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s unfounded insistence that considering race can only be legal for a certain amount of time into the future — regardless of what the law and the Constitution say,” he wrote.

At issue is whether the state’s congressional map, which includes a second majority-Black district, violates constitutional protections against race discrimination.

But Kavanaugh steered the hearing into broader ideological territory by pressing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund attorney, Janai Nelson, on when race-conscious remedies should end — a question not rooted in the actual text of the law or Constitution, Rubin noted.

Nelson responded that there is no legal time limit, emphasizing that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — currently under scrutiny — targets current, provable racial discrimination in voting. That provision has become especially vital since the Court’s 2013 decision, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, which effectively dismantled another key part of the Act.

Kavanaugh first introduced his “time limit” theory in a 2023 case from Alabama, where he and Roberts joined liberal justices in a surprising 5-4 vote upholding a Section 2 claim.

However, Rubin noted that Kavanaugh signaled then that he might not support such remedies indefinitely, writing that “race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”

Now, Rubin argues, that theory is no longer theoretical.

With the Court’s conservative majority expressing discomfort with race-based considerations, even when aimed at remedying discrimination, Rubin sees the Louisiana case as a potential turning point.
If the Court rules in favor of the state, it could sharply curtail Section 2’s power, a result Nelson called “pretty catastrophic.”

Rubin concluded that abandoning race-conscious remedies not only misreads the law but ignores the ongoing racial realities they were designed to address.