INJUSTICE ANYWHERE... 🗳️

INJUSTICE ANYWHERE… 🗳️ 

May 6, 2026 • Issue No. 36

This time last year, the issue opened with, “Sparkle Gang, can we have some fun today?” I was writing about the Met Gala (Issue #11: 3 At-Work Lessons from the Met Gala Red Carpet)…

…but what a difference a year can make. Since then, public media lost federal funding (Jul ‘25), peaceful protestors have been murdered for speaking out against illegal deportation (Jan ‘26), and we’ve started a war with Iran (Feb ‘26). Then last week, the Supreme Court took action to silence a whole lot of us.

In today’s issue, I want to make sure you know what’s happening, how this impacts you as a career woman, and how we can take action.

What’s Happening

The photos they showed you in history class of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, and Rosa Parks depicted a movement that wasn’t just about desegregating buses and public places. The goal of the Civil Rights Movement was full equality — on the bus and in the workplace as much as in the voting booth.

The pictures may have been in black and white, but the Movement was only 60 years ago. Before 1965, states could (and did) turn away voters based on race, gender, ability or anything else they wanted by instituting ridiculous hoops for potential voters to jump through (jelly bean tests, literacy tests, and flat-out violence).

Dr. King was present when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and for the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Without institutional protection for voting rights, civil rights could easily be rolled back. And that’s where we find ourselves in 2026: with our voting rights unprotected and our civil rights on the line.

Last week, the Supreme Court decided on Louisiana v. Callais. I’ll give you the shortest version I can. If you’d prefer a video breakdown, I like this one from Vox.

• the Voting Rights Act (VRA) required that the voting maps reflect the make-up of a state’s population, based on census data. This was a direct response to the poll tests and taxes that disproportionately affected Black voters.

• The 2020 Census showed that 30% of Louisiana’s population is Black, and the new maps would need to reflect Black voters’ influence.

• After the last election, advocates in Louisiana pushed to redraw its 6 districts so that they had 2 majority Black districts instead of 1.

  • Here’s the math:

    • 1 district (out of 6) is only 16.5% (not reflective of the State’s Black influence)

    • 2 districts (out of 6) is 33% (more reflective of the State’s Black influence)

• A group of ‘non-African American voters’ who lived in the new district sued, saying that being grouped into a majority-Black district ‘silenced’ their vote.

• The Supreme Court heard the case and decided that States should no longer draw their maps based on racial demographics.

• Now, without the need to reflect population data, districting maps can be cut pretty much any old way.

All of this means that the Supreme Court has thrown out the protections that prevented race-based disenfranchisement. There’s a strong likelihood that Black voters, Latinidad voters, Asian voters, Indigenous Voters, Multi-racial voters — any of the minorities who comprise the non-white majority — will be less able to vote in the midterms and subsequent elections.

Impacts to Women At Work

White women have been able to vote since the success of the Suffrage Movement resulted in our country’s Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. However, much of the legislation that protects women wasn’t passed until much later. Examples include:

• No Fault Divorce (1969) - California is the first state to adopt the policy that allows a woman to leave her marriage without having to prove abuse, abandonment, infidelity, etc.

• Title IX (1972) - prohibited discrimination based on sex in public institutions; increased women’s enrollment in college and participation in athletics

• Roe v. Wade (1973) - protected a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy

• Equal Credit Opportunity Act (1974) - prohibits discrimination against any applicant for credit based on gender, race, marital status, etc.

It’s unlikely that we’d have any of these advancements if voting rights hadn’t been expanded. Time and again, election results have shown which groups are most likely to vote in favor of policies that support a woman’s right to choose, receive quality education, work, and maintain independence. Women’s rights depend on women’s political power and if all women can’t vote, all women’s rights are at-risk. 

Further, the rollback on the Voting Rights Act will work in tandem with the SAVE Act, to disenfranchise even more women — and not just based on their race. The new act requires voters to show IDs that match their birth names, which means that anyone who’s changed their names will face an uphill battle to prove their own identity. This could include women who use their married names, women who’ve changed their names for protection from domestic violence, trans women, and more.

Less votes from women will mean less votes for women.

Less votes from women will mean less women in office.

Less votes from women will mean less women introducing and supporting legislation that address the needs of women and families.

Less votes from women will mean little to no accountability from our elected officials. The legal protections you have at work — from sexual harrassment, for family leave, and that govern what your health insurance covers — could begin to disappear when legislators can ignore voteless citizens.

Less votes from women also means less role models to which girls can aspire. In 1992, our country elected 47 women to Congress — a record number that earned ‘92 the title of Year of The Woman. But those 47 women still only made up 9% of the legislative body in a country where women are 50% of the population. In 2026, we’ve jumped up to 154, which is still only 29%. It took decades to make those gains, and now we may have to claw them back.

How To Take Action

We need to grab the baton that’s been passed to us by the suffragettes and civil rights activists who led the way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Patsy Mink and more. And we can do it in a woman-ly way: nag, nag, nag.

• Don’t shut up about it

  • Tell anyone who will listen (and even the people who won’t) about what’s at stake.

  • Make sure young women understand that this is their fight, too. If you have a mentee, loop her in.

  • Contact your electeds and let them know that you will not be silenced. Remind them that voting is a right, not a privilege, and cannot be taken away.

  • Show up to town halls and forums. Air your grievances.

  • If you’re on social media, post about it there. Not just once, regularly.

I hope you’re feeling worried. I hope you’re feeling motivated. I hope you can understand how this isn’t just about Black voters, or Black women, or even just women. This is about all of us. In his letter from Birmingham Jail, after he’d been arrested for not shutting up, Dr. King wrote,

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

The rights we enjoy today weren’t won with individual or inconsistent action. The work hasn’t changed. The blueprint is there, we just need to rebuild.

💎 You get a say. Never, never shut up. 💎 

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