Former Vice President Kamala Harris joined a cohort of Black women to rebuke the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority for its ruling two weeks ago that gutted the Voting Rights Act, setting off a wave of Republican-led states drawing out majority-Black districts in congressional maps across the South.
On Wednesday evening, Harris delivered remarks during an emergency virtual meeting hosted by Win with Black Women, a pro-democracy grassroots movement of Black women leaders and organizers. The cohort discussed the impact of the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which raised the bar for Black voters seeking to prove racial discrimination in redistricting. As a result, Republican-led states rushed to redraw congressional maps ahead of November’s midterm elections, targeting traditionally majority-Black districts that were once protected by Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“What they are doing is they are back-dooring racism behind politics to get to this decision and to justify what is happening in particular right now in all the southern states, and this is obviously a time for us to fight,” Harris, the first Black woman vice president and Democratic presidential nominee, told the Black women leaders.
Harris signaled that the Supreme Court’s consequential ruling and the subsequent actions taken by Republicans to suppress or dilute the power of Black voters will activate Black communities nationwide. The former vice president shared that she recently met with students at North Carolina A&T University, an HBCU, who protested the state’s decision to close a campus polling station.
“[They] took their polling place because they’re so afraid of the power of those young leaders to activate and to vote and to change the status quo and to topple some of these people from their perch. They’re so scared,” said Harris. “Gen Z, millennials, they’re not having it.”
The former California U.S. Senator and Attorney General said that, despite voting protections for Black voters being set back, organizers and leaders have the “playbook” of the Civil Rights era to turn to and use to push back. The ancestors “whose broad shoulders we stand” on, said Harris, “show us the way and what a fight looks like.”
She continued, “I know the power is ours, and I know we’re not about to let anybody take our power from us.”
Harris, who has not ruled out running for president again in 2028, laid out her political positions on what Democrats must do to fight back, including making serious reforms to the Supreme Court and even abolishing the Electoral College. She called for “expanding the playbook,” adding, “There’s going to be some risks that we’re going to have to assume along with that, but we need to be prepared to be able to handle that.”
The former vice president said there are “no bad ideas” as Democrats and pro-democracy leaders think about how to reform the political system.
“And in that no bad ideas brainstorm, we talk about what we need to do and think about doing around the Electoral College. We talk about the idea of Supreme Court reform, which includes expanding the Supreme Court,” said Harris. She continued, “We invite a conversation about multi-members districts…let’s talk about statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C.”
Harris also said that if Democrats win back majority control of the U.S. Senate, the Senate Judiciary Committee should establish rules to penalize Supreme Court nominees who lie before Congress to be confirmed. She also called for establishing ethics rules for the nation’s highest court, whose public approval rating is near a historic low.
Harris said now is the time to “fight fire with fire,” arguing, “We’ve got to neutralize these red states from cheating, including blue states expanding their maps…These folks are playing to win. We got to play to win, too.” However, she emphasized, “We are never going to violate the law or do anything unethical or immoral, but we need to be ruthless too.”
“This is a fight worth having. When you know what you know, what you stand for, you know what to fight for,” added Harris. “When you feel powerless, you are powerless. When you feel powerful, you are powerful. We are powerful. And yes, the fight just got more difficult…[but] we are up for a good fight because we know what’s at stake, and we know it’s worth it.”
