This article was originally published in Bolts Magazine.
Conservative judges have chipped away at voting rights and put the Voting Rights Act through renewed stress over the last decade. They’re now set to gain new allies with the incoming Trump administration and GOP majorities in Congress. At the same time, GOP-led states are devising new restrictions on voter registration and ballot access, leaving civil rights organizations scrambling to field viable legal challenges in federal and state courts.
Faced with eroding federal protections, some states have tried to shore up voting rights. They have passed their own voting rights acts, banned partisan gerrymandering, and expanded the franchise. But their efforts are facing legal challenges as well, this time from the right, raising fresh questions as to what strategies can most effectively strengthen democracy.
Heading into this new political era, Bolts has identified eight legal battles that are likely to shape voting rights in 2025.
These cases will affect election rules locally, from redistricting in Florida and Louisiana to the future of mail ballots in Mississippi and the fate of new protections in New York. But their effects will also ripple nationwide, as other states eye how they may further buttress or cut down on voting.
1. Will a redistricting case out of Louisiana weaken the VRA?
Conservatives are pursuing a multi-pronged attack to eliminate what is left of the Voting Rights Act. Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions in 2023, conservatives have objected with renewed vigor to the longstanding approach of considering race in redistricting to create minority-majority districts, arguing that race-based districting is unconstitutional.
Their effort is coming to a head this year in a blockbuster Supreme Court case that is centered around Louisiana’s congressional map.
After the 2020 census, Louisiana legislators approved a new congressional map that included only one Black-majority district, stretching from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. A lawsuit countered that this map diluted the power of Black voters, and that the Voting Rights Act required two Black-majority districts. After lengthy proceedings, the Fifth Circuit of Appeals sided with plaintiffs in late 2023 and ordered that a new map be drawn by January 2024.
The legislature abided by the ruling, creating a second majority-Black district that goes from Baton Rouge in central Louisiana to Shreveport in the far northwest corner. The district elected Cleo Fields, a Black Democrat, in November.
But a group of mostly white voters, who describe themselves as “non-African American,” now wants to throw the new map out. They claim the legislature impermissibly relied on race to draw the districts, violating the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Two Trump-appointed judges ruled last year that the map was likely unconstitutional and struck it down, though the Supreme Court stepped in and allowed it to be used in the 2024 election.
The Supreme Court will hold hearings on this case in the spring of 2025. The justices will decide whether Louisiana’s new map survives by the end of their session in late June.
Complicating matters: The state of Louisiana is ostensibly defending the new map, but voting rights advocates have accused the state of deliberately undermining its own case. Louisiana officials already raised eyebrows last year when they chose to draw a new majority-Black district that bore a striking resemblance to a district that was struck down in the 1990s. Civil rights groups had pushed for a more compact design they deemed legally safer, and they suspected Republicans had different intentions.
If the Supreme Court sides with the plaintiffs, it could gut Section 2 of the VRA, which shields minority-majority districts. Or, the court may introduce new restrictions on factoring in race in redistricting. Even if it doesn’t strike down Section 2, this would raise a host of new questions about its implementation and the viability of minority-majority districts nationwide. In either case, it would spell major trouble for Cleo Fields’s future in Congress.
2. How will courts treat new state-level Voting Rights Acts?
As the U.S. Supreme Court has trimmed the federal VRA, some states have stepped in to pass VRAs of their own. Though details vary depending on the state, they frequently go much further than federal law in safeguarding fairness in redistricting and access to the ballot.
But these laws have sparked conservative challenges of their own. Last fall, a superior court judge in New York struck down the state’s VRA, concluding that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
The case is now working its way through New York’s appeals process, an important test of the viability of state VRAs as an alternative to the federal law. Other VRAs have fared better in their own state’s courts so far, but still more states have adopted these laws in recent years (including New Mexico in 2023 and Minnesota last year), creating new battlegrounds to watch.
3. Will mail ballots still be afforded a grace period to arrive?
In 18 states, mail ballots can trickle into election offices after Election Day, as long as they’ve been postmarked by Election Day. The approach helps people vote by mail without needing to worry about possible delays in delivery, but it also lengthens election counts, and Republicans have accused it without evidence of facilitating voter fraud.
In a bombshell ruling in October, a panel of conservative federal judges threw this longstanding practice into question. The case will continue in 2025 and possibly create new obstacles to mail voting.
The Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Republican Party last year challenged Mississippi’s rule, which allows ballots to arrive up to five days after Election Day, arguing that it conflicts with a federal law that sets the date of the election. Three Trump-appointed judges on the Fifth Circuit agreed. They ruled that “ballots must be both cast by voters and received by state officials” by the “day of the election,” though they did not apply their holding to the 2024 elections. Several voter groups have asked the full Fifth Circuit to hear the case; their appeal may end up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, which could swat away the ruling.
But the Supreme Court could also apply the rule nationwide, affecting all of the states that allow ballots to arrive after Election Day. This would risk disenfranchising thousands of voters. Administrative delays and errors in sending ballots out are common enough, and a requirement that ballots be received by Election Day would put voters at the mercy of how quickly the U.S. Postal Service operates. Trump has evoked the prospect of privatizing USPS, which could add further complications.
4. Will GOP states succeed at criminalizing voter assistance?
GOP-run states have passed new bans in recent years on civic organizations helping people vote. They’ve made it harder to provide assistance with registration, to fill out requests for mail ballots, and to collect filled-out ballots.
Just last year, Alabama adopted a law that imposes lengthy prison sentences on paid organizers who help people vote by mail. A new Missouri law similarly restricts assisting people with absentee ballots and with voter registration. And Florida barred non-citizens from assisting with voter registration efforts.
These bans on voter assistance now all face legal tests. All three suffered early defeats in 2024; the Florida and Alabama laws were suspended or struck down by a federal district court, and a state court judge blocked Missouri’s. But proponents of the bans have appealed to salvage the laws. These cases in 2025 will shape how similar restrictions evolve around the country.
5. Will lifetime disenfranchisement survive two lawsuits in Virginia?
Youngkin has made Virginia one of the harshest states in the nation when it comes to restoring the voting rights of people with criminal convictions. Two years ago, he rescinded policies put in place by his predecessors and brought back a lifetime ban on voting for anyone convicted of a felony.
The ACLU of Virginia and other groups have filed an unusual lawsuit in response: They claim that Youngkin’s decision violates the Virginia Readmission Act, the Reconstruction-era federal law that allowed Virginia to rejoin the United States. In an effort to limit schemes to exclude Black residents, Congress in 1870 restricted the range of felonies that Virginia can use to strip people of the right to vote. Yet, Virginia today disenfranchises people who’ve been convicted of any felony whatsoever; the practice disproportionately affects Black Virginians.
The case is now poised to go to trial in federal court, after the Fourth Circuit greenlit the lawsuit in December. Jared Davidson, a co-counsel for the plaintiff, has said the case is a “milestone in terms of ensuring that the promises and guarantees of the Reconstruction Congress are finally fulfilled and honored by the state of Virginia.”
Virginia’s felony disenfranchisement rules are also the target of a separate lawsuit, this one brought by George Hawkins, a Virginian profiled by Bolts in 2023 who expected to regain his voting rights until Youngkin cut down his hopes. The lawsuit alleges that Virginia’s new rules violate the First Amendment. A district court ruled in favor of the state last year, and this case currently sits with the Fourth Circuit.
If courts strike down Virginia’s approach in either case this year, it may expand the franchise just in time for the state’s elections that will decide, among other offices, Youngkin’s successor.
6. How will eligible voters be affected by measures targeting noncitizens?
Donald Trump and his allies have relentlessly spread the false claim that non-citizens are illegally voting in significant numbers in U.S. elections, and Republican state officials have taken a range of actions in response. Arizona and New Hampshire have passed laws requiring that voters provide proof of citizenship at the time of registration; the rule is tripping up many people who are citizens but lack the proper documentation. And in the final stretch of the 2024 election, several GOP-led states purged their voter rolls, claiming they were getting rid of alleged non-citizens. But the purges affected U.S. citizens who were eligible to vote.
This issue is sure to keep grabbing legal headlines in 2025.
Voting rights advocates have battled Arizona’s law for years, pointing out that the National Voter Registration Act, or NVRA, shields voters from needing to prove their citizenship. The Supreme Court last summer allowed parts of the law to be enforced in the 2024 elections, but the case remains alive in the Ninth Circuit. In September, voting rights advocates also filed a similar suit against the New Hampshire law. Should federal courts end up ruling that the NVRA authorizes proof-of-citizenship requirements, it may open the floodgate to similar laws in other states. Republicans in Congress have also signaled this will be a priority for them at the federal level.
And Virginia’s upcoming elections will be fought in the shadow of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s decision to order a big voter purge last summer. Youngkin issued his order 90 days before the presidential race, even though the NVRA bars “systematically” purging voters within 90 days of a federal election. A lawsuit to block his order saw some early success but, in a shock order, the U.S. Supreme Court intervened and allowed the purges to continue with no explanation.
The case will still be heard in lower court to determine the legality of Youngkin’s purge. The result may set important precedent, not just for purges in other parts of the country, but also for how Youngkin himself acts in the lead-up to Virginia’s gubernatorial race in November.
7. Will courts allow noncitizens to vote in New York’s local elections?
Across the country, even as nativist rhetoric has amped up, some municipalities have gone in the opposite direction: They’ve allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections, with the idea of giving them a voice in the decisions closest to them.
But conservatives have sued to stop these laws, arguing that they dilute the political power of citizens. Federal law does not prohibit allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections, so these lawsuits are usually playing out in state court. San Francisco, Washington, D.C, and multiple towns in Vermont have managed to implement this reform in recent years despite litigation to stop them.
But with just months to go before New York City’s municipal elections this summer, this reform remains stuck in the country’s most populous city. The city council passed an ordinance to allow noncitizens to vote in its local elections in late 2021, but a local judge struck it down in the spring of 2022 and an appeals court affirmed that ruling last year. The city council has since appealed the decision to the state’s highest court, but there’s been no development since.
8. Will Florida judges destroy protections against gerrymandering?
Floridians in 2010 embraced redistricting reform. They approved two constitutional amendments that barred partisan and racial gerrymandering and set up other measures to force lawmakers to draw fair maps. After GOP lawmakers largely ignored those requirements, the state supreme court in 2015 struck down their maps for violating the 2010 measures. Significantly, this produced a new Black-majority congressional district that connected Tallahassee to Jacksonville in north Florida, which elected Democrat Al Lawson in 2016.
Urged on by Governor Ron DeSantis, Republicans in 2022 adopted new aggressive gerrymanders and eliminated Lawson’s seat. And this decade, the voting rights groups that are challenging the maps are faced with a judiciary that has veered sharply to the right during DeSantis’ tenure. This has left the Fair District Amendments on the brink of irrelevance.
The Florida Supreme Court heard a lawsuit against the state’s new congressional map in September. The plaintiffs argued that the state diluted Black political representation by eliminating the Black-majority district in North Florida, in violation of the 2010 amendments. “Under Florida precedent from last decade, this is an open and shut case,” Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, told NPR at the time.
Instead, Chief Justice Carlos Muniz, a DeSantis appointee, raised the prospect that the 2010 Fair Districts Amendments might be unconstitutional altogether—and that the court might strike it down.
While this court always appeared unlikely to strike down the legislature’s map, striking down the fair districting requirements entirely would be another matter. There would be no more protection against partisan gerrymandering in the Florida Constitution, allowing Republicans going forward to freely gerrymander without even the feeble threat of state court intervention.
Honorable mentions
There can be no exhaustive list of the challenges that await democracy in 2025, and there are plenty of other state-specific legal battles that are already brewing.
In the final days of 2024, North Carolina Republicans passed legislation that upended election administration, stripping the Democratic governor of his authority over election boards and transferring that power to an office held by a Republican; Democrats have signaled they will sue over these changes. Wisconsin awaits a supreme court decision on the fate of Meagan Wolfe, the state’s top election administrator whom Republicans hope to fire. And today, Pennsylvania’s supreme court said it will decide whether mail ballots that have not been dated should count; the state has a complex legal landscape when it comes to mail voting.
And the upcoming legislative sessions may create new sources of litigation if states pass laws that affect voting rights. For instance, an Idaho lawmaker just introduced legislation to make it harder to pass ballot instance; the state supreme court struck down a prior round of restrictions on direct democracy at the beginning of this decade.
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