This week, the Supreme Court’s Republican majority dealt another blow to Americans’ voting rights. 

In their ruling, Trump’s handpicked Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act– a law that ensured that communities of color could build power and have a voice when electoral maps are drawn. For decades, the Voting Rights Act ensured that communities of color could elect leaders who reflect their values and lived experiences. This week’s ruling weakens those protections. 

The decision in Louisiana v. Callais has made it easier for far-right politicians to draw maps that silence communities, splitting them apart or packing them together so that families find themselves in electoral districts where their concerns– like the cost of groceries, access to healthcare, or funding for schools– are ignored because they no longer have a real say in who represents them. It’s a process that North Carolinians are all too familiar with. 

North Carolina has redrawn its maps five times over the past six years. The most recent redraw was done at the request of Trump, who wanted a Republican advantage in this year’s midterms. Republicans in the NC General Assembly didn’t pass a budget or fund public schools, but they did take the time to manipulate our electoral system further in their favor.   

Republicans know that Americans all across the country are ready to hold their elected officials accountable at the ballot box, so they’re trying to silence us. They know that Trump’s cost-raising tariffs are unpopular. They know that we’re frustrated with Trump’s war with Iran, that rising gas prices are hurting all of us, from families to farmers to small businesses. And they know that we didn’t want massive cuts to affordable health care, food assistance, and cancer research– cuts that were used to give billionaires even bigger tax breaks. 

But no matter how many obstacles MAGA Republicans put in our way, North Carolinians will find a way for their voice to be heard. Every major civil rights victory in our history grew out of moments just like this one. 

It was right here in North Carolina where four brave NC A&T students took a seat at a “Whites Only” lunch counter in Greensboro, inspiring the nationwide sit-ins that helped end segregation in the United States. 

It was in Raleigh that Ella Baker formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a group which would become key to the Civil Rights Movement. 

And it was in North Carolina that a massive voting rights Supreme Court case was born. In 2016, a lawsuit against Republican Governor Pat McCrory resulted in the Supreme Court striking down racial gerrymandering, a ruling that would protect the Voting Rights Act across the country for another ten years. 

This week’s Supreme Court decision hurts, but it’s not the end of our story. There are many more battles to come and victories to follow. 

Our next opportunity to defend our democracy will be coming this November, when we’ll be able to shape our own courts. NC Supreme Court Justices are selected by the voters, and we have the opportunity to re-elect a civil rights advocate and fierce defender of our democracy– Justice Anita Earls. Our courts need to get back to upholding the Constitution and protecting our fundamental rights, and re-electing Justice Earls would be a step in the right direction toward doing just that.

This week was a setback, but we’ve come too far and sacrificed too much to give up now. The democracy that we’re fighting to defend was built on the work of countless people who came before us– anonymous people who fought day in and day out to move our country closer to its ideals. 

Young students who joined protests, concerned parents who wrote their representatives, union workers who led strikes, working families who knocked on doors and talked to their neighbors– we’re still benefiting from the love and sacrifice of those who came before us. It’s our turn to pay it forward.