WASHINGTON — Every year since 1969, at least one of Missouri’s elected representatives in Washington has been Black, oftentimes, two. Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling that undermined the Voting Rights Act raises questions about whether that tradition will continue.
Missouri Democrats, particularly the state’s Black lawmakers, from the nation’s capital to the state’s capital, are sounding the alarm.
“Make no mistake: This ruling is not a defense of ‘colorblind democracy,’” state Rep. Michael Johnson, head of the Legislative Black Caucus, said in a news release. “It is a license for those in power to dilute Black political power while hiding behind the Constitution they have chosen to selectively honor.”
U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell, who represents a St. Louis district that has consistently sent a Black representative to Congress for six decades, sees this ruling as undermining “what civil rights leaders and activists fought for.”
“When we see that right, constitutional right, being chipped away on the edges, it’s very concerning,” he said.
Missouri elected its first Black representative to the U.S. House of Representatives three years after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. In the 60 years since, Missouri has sent six Black representatives to Washington. All of them are from St. Louis or Kansas City.
Nationally, of the 12,591 members who have been elected and served in Congress since 1789, 201 have been Black, according to the U.S. House Historian’s office.
The Voting Rights Act strengthened Black voting power by prohibiting discriminatory practices that some states, most especially those of the old Confederacy, used to keep Black people from voting. These included discriminatory “literacy tests” and poll taxes, meant to create a financial barrier to the polls.
“The Civil Rights Movement, starting back in the ’60s, made some tremendous progress in protecting voting rights across the board for all people. And particularly minorities that were being disproportionately impacted,” said Missouri Democratic Party Chairman Russ Carnahan. “And now the court has turned backwards to go back to those not so good times to open the door for that kind of discrimination again.”
Even before the Supreme Court’s decision, Missouri Republicans were already taking aim at one of the state’s two black members of Congress.
Emanuel Cleaver, who represents Kansas City’s 5th district, is currently at the center of a redistricting battle. Missouri’s Republican-dominated state legislature is pushing a redistricting plan this year that could eliminate his current district.
At the direction of President Donald Trump, Missouri’s state legislators joined their GOP counterparts across the country in redrawing the state’s congressional lines to try to shore up the Republican majority in the U.S. House in November’s elections.
If the state legislature’s new map withstands a court challenge, Cleaver is likely to lose his seat to a Republican.
“I feel horrible today,” Cleaver told the Missourian on the day the Supreme Court handed down its ruling. “It reminded me of my grandpa, Reverend Noah Albert Cleaver. He died at 103 and never voted, because he had to pay a poll tax, and he just wouldn’t do it. So he died without ever voting in the United States of America.”
While the Voting Rights Act did not directly affect Missouri, University of Missouri political scientist Scott LaCombe thinks the Supreme Court ruling could have a ripple effect that would reduce the number of Black representation and Democrats that the Show-Me state sends to Congress.
“I think a lot of states are going to be emboldened to draw more aggressive gerrymanders,” LaCombe said.
In the past, the Voting Rights Act has made politicians reluctant to advance gerrymanders that dilute the Black vote, for fear of drawing lawsuits. The Supreme Court decision may make them less concerned about that, LaCombe said.
While neither Carnahan nor Bell would speculate over whether Missouri’s Republicans could take aim at Bell’s St. Louis district next, former Rep. Cori Bush was more outspoken.
Bush, who lost a Democratic primary to Bell in 2024, and is trying to win back her seat this year, called the court’s decision a show of “just how far MAGA Republicans will go to disenfranchise Black voters,” in a social media post on X.
Bush called for enactment of proposed voter protection legislation that Democratic leaders in Congress so far have been unable to get through a Republican-controlled Congress. “Democrats must fight back against this blatant attack on our voting rights, pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and exercise all options available to stand up for the right to vote,” Bush said in her post.
Named after a late civil rights icon who served 33 years as a member of Congress, the John Lewis act would update the Voting Rights Act and establish new criteria to determine which states must receive federal preclearance before making changes to voting practices.
Cleaver called the act “a contemporary solution to the problems that still exist in this country based on race.”
If Mizzou’s LaCombe is correct that the republicans may take gerrymandering to a new level, it would not only hurt the state’s Black representation in Congress, but the Democratic party’s representation in Congress.
Currently two of Missouri’s eight members of the U.S. House are Democrats. Republicans are hoping that their new redistricting plan will leave just one of the state’s eight congressional districts in Democratic hands. A redrawing of the 1st Congressional District could potentially drop that number to zero. More than 40% of Missouri’s votes for president in the last presidential election went to Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, according to the Secretary of State website.
Mizzou’s LaCombe thinks one party politics are bad for everyone.
“I think there’s a lot of value of having bipartisan representation in Washington, DC, because, you know, one day, there will be a Democratic president and a Democratic trifecta again, and we want to have a Missouri representative there within that coalition. I think states are really doing themselves a disservice when they have a single party coalition,” he said.
He also thinks it hurts civic life. “Competitive electoral environments boost turnout. You tend to have better policy that’s more responsive to voters. And so the more incumbents feel like they are not worried about losing their seats, the more complacent they’re going to get. And really, just the worse representation Missouri is going to get,” LaCombe said.
Despite the odds against him in the upcoming election, Cleaver isn’t giving up. “I think we’re resilient. I think we’re going to find a way to combat this attempt to reduce, if not eliminate, minority participation in the Congress of the United States,” he said.