I thought I would make a post on this since there is a lot of confusion going around. But before we get to that its important to understand what the VRA even was.
The VRA was passed by LBJ to address actual discrimination and racism in the deep south. The actual VRA is actually a good bill, it outlawed literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation at the polls, etc. However the controversial part of the bill comes to section 2 and redistricting.
Before today the VRA was based off the Gingles test. Plantiffs could sue if the black vote was large and compact (think cities like Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis, etc) , voted as a block (blacks vote 90-10), and the white voters voted as a block to vote against the black minority's preferred candidate (Trump won like 83% of whites in Mississippi). As a result, states were forced to draw these VRA districts to give black voters their preferred candidate of choice since they had large enough communities to warrant it. This made Republicans fairly upset because they could not gerrymander southern states due to the VRA.
After the 2020 census, black voters in Louisiana pushed for another VRA seat arguing that their current 1/6 seats wasn't proportionate for a state that was over 30% black and had racially polarized voting. A federal court forced them to create another black district thus making it 2/6. However, for the first time white voters sued and said that the new LA district was racially gerrymandering against white people and violated the 14th amendment's equal protection clause. This is the case known as Callais and was decided by SCOTUS this morning.
SCOTUS did two things. First they struck down the second seat in Louisiana saying that there was no reason to force them to draw a map based off race and violated the 14th amendment. The second part seems to have some confusion.
Contrary to what people are saying, SCOTUS did not actually kill off section 2 of the VRA. Naturally occuring, compact black districts can still exist and be defended. If an urban seat in Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis, etc exists and majority black thats fine under the new standard. However, the problem is that almost all of these seats are in Republican states who want to gerrymander them out. This is where the VRA functionally is killed as we know it.
The Gingles test is severely weakened. In order to prevent a state from gerrymandering in the deep south, and Dems must prove that the gerrymander was done due to race reasons and not partisanship. They must now claim that Republicans trying to gerrymander out places like Memphis or New Orleans is done because those voters are black and not because those voters are Democrat. This is functionally impossible to do because in the south blacks vote like 90% Dem. You would also have to provide a reasonable alternative map that shows that a majority minority seat is possible while satisfying the states goal of a partisanship gerrymander. So if Louisiana wants to go 6-0 you would have to create a 6-0 map with a majority black district which is effectively impossible. As a result VRA as we know it in congressional redistricting is basically dead.
Republicans will now be permitted to gerrymander out Democrats in the south to their heart's desire. The VRA still "technically" exists but its a shell of its former self. Its probably too late for 2026, but for 2028 Rs can do 6-0 LA, 9-0 TN, 4-0 MS, 7-0 SC, and 11-3 GA (if they win governorship). Alabama is technically banned from redrawing till the 2030s, but they might get it resolved by then. Missouri could also go for killing the ST Louis seat but I'm not sure if they will.
So where does the VRA still apply? Well it still has some impacts on local races most notably city council and school boards. These are typically non-partisan so any gerrymander of these would be very easy to prove as a VRA violation and get it struck down. But for all intents of purposes the congressional map ban of gerrymandering the south is basically gone after today.