Civil rights icon Andrew Young is once again sounding the alarm over the future of the Voting Rights Act, delivering a blunt and impassioned warning as the U.S. Supreme Court continues to weigh challenges to the landmark law.
“The Supreme Court will go to hell if they try to reverse it,” Young said, underscoring both his frustration and the high stakes he believes are involved.
- Advertisement -
In an interview with CNN, the 94-year-old former congressman and close ally of Martin Luther King Jr. framed the Voting Rights Act as one of the nation’s most transformative achievements. He pointed to recent milestones, including NASA’s
Artemis II mission, featuring a diverse crew, as evidence of the more inclusive America the law helped shape.
“I don’t know why the Supreme Court thinks that by backtracking on 250 years of constitutional government that’s going to do any better for the citizens of this nation,” Young said. “We have come so close to making this Earth look like the kingdom of God.”
His remarks come as the Voting Rights Act faces sustained legal and political challenges, particularly from conservative critics who argue that certain provisions overstep federal authority and infringe on states’ rights. Late Justice Antonin Scalia once referred to the law as a “racial entitlement,”a characterization Young dismissed outright.
“Bullsh*t,” he said. “I’ve heard those arguments all my life.”
For Young, the debate is not abstract. He recalls the violent struggle that led to the law’s passage, when Black Americans faced job loss, beatings, and even death for attempting to vote. In 1964, Young himself was knocked unconscious during a march in St. Augustine, Florida — a moment he still memorializes in his office.
“I’ve been beat up and I’ve been jailed,” he said. “The amazing thing to me is it didn’t even hurt.”
Despite those hardships, Young said he and his peers pressed forward, driven by faith and conviction.
“We have been willing to live and die for the United States of America — not for what it is, but for what we know it can become.”
While he admits he never expected the Voting Rights Act to face renewed threats decades later, Young remains optimistic. He believes any rollback efforts could galvanize voters rather than suppress them.
“There’ll be a judgment day soon,” he said. “That judgment day is Election Day.”
Still active in public life, Young works through the Andrew Young Foundation and continues preaching regularly in Atlanta. Though age has slowed his step, it has not diminished his voice, or his sense of purpose.
“Do you know anybody that’s retired that’s not bored?” he quipped.
In recent years, Young has also endured personal loss, including the deaths of close friends like Jesse Jackson and former
President Jimmy Carter. Yet he speaks of them as ever-present in his life and work.
“I don’t miss them because they’re with me,” he said.
Grounded in his Christian faith, Young views the current moment as part of a longer moral arc. He insists that justice, and progress, remain inevitable.
“A just society is a society in which all of God’s children have rights and opportunities that are protected by the Constitution,” he said.
For those discouraged by the court’s direction, Young offered a message rooted in the spirituals that once echoed through the civil rights movement.
“We’ve come too far from where we started from,” he said, recalling a familiar gospel refrain. “And I don’t believe He brought us this far to leave us.”
