May 11, 2026
Are Black congressmen once again an endangered species in the South?
A Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais is described as gutting the Voting Rights Act by restoring an intent-only standard, making racial vote dilution far harder to prove and putting minority political representation in the South at serious risk.
William Rothbard
Email: Rothbard@FTCAdLaw.com
William Rothbard also represents clients in federal and state deceptive advertising investigations and enforcement actions as well as consumer class actions and has litigated and settled scores of matters. He provides advertising-related transactional services, including contracts, trademarks, sweepstakes and contests. Bill writes and speaks often on advertising and marketing law topics. He has served as the Editor of Competition, an antitrust and trade regulation journal published by the California State Bar Antitrust and Trade Regulation Section, and is the author of the legal blog, FTCAdLaw Alert, which can be found on his firm website. He has served as an advertising law expert in FTC-related cases and serves as an expert within his field in the global expert consulting network of the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG). Prior to entering private practice, Bill was an attorney with the FTC, holding positions as an advertising enforcement attorney, Deputy Assistant Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, and Attorney-Advisor to the FTC Chairman. He also served as Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Monopolies and Business Rights. He is a graduate of UC Law San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings College of Law) and The University of Michigan. In his civic life, Bill is a past Chair of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, past President of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, former Board Member of Bet Tzedek Legal Services, and a former candidate for the California Assembly.
Before 1965, one Black person had been elected to Congress from the South since the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Since then, 34 have been elected to the House of Representatives and two to the Senate. The catalyst of the change: simply, and undeniably, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a legislative landmark in American history and watershed moment for racial justice in a great nation whose founding ideal of equality for all was marred by the sin of slavery and a century more of ...
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