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After the US supreme court essentially struck down another major provision of the Voting Rights Act, advocates and Democratic lawmakers have renewed a push in the states to enact their own versions of the landmark civil rights bill to protect voters.

The supreme court ruled this week in Louisiana v Callais, effectively dismantling section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which has been used to ensure minority voters receive fair treatment in drawing districts. The decision weakens Black voters’ power to elect their own representatives and sets off another set of redistricting pushes in an election year.

Nine blue and purple states now have a version of a state voting rights act, a statute that works to protect voters in the state in the absence of federal protections. Eleven other states, including several in the south, have seen bills introduced to create their own versions.

Most of the state-level statutes have similar provisions, including some kind of prohibition on voter suppression, vote dilution, and voter intimidation and a requirement for pre-clearance of voting changes.

The Callais decision is a huge blow to voting rights nationwide, and state voting rights acts will not be able to fully replace it, even if they were enacted in all states. They are less likely to succeed in implementing state voting rights acts in places where they are most needed, namely in southern states dominated by Republicans.

Beyond that, some election law experts believe the decision will renew efforts in the states to legally attack state voting rights acts, though proponents for the state acts believe they are on solid legal ground.

Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said the civil rights organization is pushing to pass state voting rights acts across the country as a state-based alternative to the “now defunct” federal Voting Rights Act.

“We will use that tool where possible and be as aggressive as we can in trying to get state voting rights acts passed even in the most unlikely of states like Louisiana and Mississippi and other places that are known for their rampant racial discrimination,” Nelson said in a press call after the decision.

But, she noted, voting rights advocates need more tools. “We were just stripped of one of the most potent and transformative tools that this country has ever known.”

Still, state voting rights acts provide an avenue for states to affirm voting rights and protect the power of minority voters while giving lawmakers a way to build momentum to pressure Congress to act on voting rights at the federal level, said Adam Lioz, senior policy counsel at the Legal Defense Fund. Even in places where they face long odds, these proposals can set out a positive vision to contrast with anti-voter laws pushed by red state legislatures, Lioz said.

California has the oldest state voting rights act, enacted in 2002. A new state voting rights act has been enacted every year since 2018, except for the pandemic year of 2020, with the threat of further dismantling of the federal act increasing urgency in the states, Lioz said. Maryland’s state voting rights act went into effect on Tuesday, one day before the Callais decision.

Voting rights advocates have been pushing for years for states to pass their own versions of state voting rights acts that apply to local elections, both in anticipation that the federal act could be further dismantled and to affirm fairness in local elections. Some proposals are exploring how to apply certain provisions to state and federal elections as well.

“State voting rights acts provide an avenue for hope,” Lioz said. “It’s something concrete that voters can advocate for, that state leaders can step up and take action on”.

Ruth Greenwood, director of the Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, has litigated a case under Washington state’s voting rights act and two cases under New York’s. In the cases she’s done, they were able to get settlements or protections that allowed “historically marginalized communities to have a chance at representation in a way that they hadn’t until that point,” she said.

“It is not that we are without tools,” Greenwood said about the supreme court decision. “It is that we are without the single best tool that we have used for the last 61 years to combat racial vote dilution.”

But, some election law experts warn, the Callais decision could spell legal trouble for state voting rights acts. The majority opinion from conservative Justice Samuel Alito indicated race-conscious legislation could be an issue beyond Callais, though the decision applied solely to the federal voting rights act, said Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law and election law expert. After the Callais ruling, the rightwing freedom caucus in Maryland said the state’s newly passed voting rights act would be “little more than a symbolic bill” that they had warned would “invite endless litigation”.

Because state voting rights acts often go farther than the federal one, Hasen expects to see new legal challenges to state voting rights acts that rely on Callais. One New York town, for instance, filed an amicus brief in the Callais case detailing how it believed the court should weigh the constitutionality of state voting rights act as well, saying the New York statute “raises even more grave constitutional concerns than does section 2 of the VRA”. The decision should “breathe new life” into constitutional attacks on these state acts, Hasen said.

“I think it’s really uncertain,” Hasen said. “But my view is this is not quite a death knell for the state VRAs, but a very, very significant ruling.”

State courts have upheld state voting rights acts in places where they’ve been challenged, said Aseem Mulji, senior legal counsel for redistricting at the Campaign Legal Center. States should not “throw in the towel” because of the decision, but instead need to think creatively about ways to protect their voters, from state voting rights acts to other ways to make proactive changes to elections.

“States really should not be holding back from using their powers to protect their own voters from discrimination of all kinds, but in particular, racial discrimination,” Mulji said. “Nothing in the decision really directly addresses the really long established power of states to prevent racial discrimination, particularly local governments, through race-neutral means. And that’s exactly what state VRAs set out to do in various ways in different states.”