NAACP urges black athletes to reject recruiting in racially gerrymandered states
The NAACP is asking athletes to take up the fight for voting rights.
BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA - APRIL 25: CJ Jimcoily #31 of the LSU Tigers celebrating during spring practice at Tiger Stadium on April 25, 2026 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Gus Stark/University Images via Getty Images} The NAACP is calling on student-athletes and prospective student-athletes to take up the mantle of fighting for the rights of black voters in the United States. The NAACP announced the “Out of Bounds Campaign” on Tuesday , which calls for “black athletes, families, fans, and alumni to withhold athletic and financial support” from public universities in states where racial gerrymandering is occurring.
As part of the initiative, the NAACP identified eight “priority states” it hopes will be hit by a potential boycott. They are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas — all of whom represent some of the biggest power-players in college athletics, and states which earn over $100M in revenue from college athletics, according to the NAACP. The unprecedented call for action comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on Louisiana v.
Callais , which functionally declared open season on minority voting rights. The court called a 2022 Louisiana congressional map “unconstitutional,” and mandated that voter maps could not be drawn based on race. The Louisiana map was drafted with the express purpose of giving black voters two seats (up from one), in order to have greater minority representation in office to better represent the 33% of the Louisiana population that is black.
As a result of the SCOTUS decision, the map is being redrawn to eliminate the second black district, giving a racial disparity of 5:1 in favor of majority-white districts. As part of their dissent, Justices Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor warned that the decision by the court would lead to the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act. That concern has so far borne out, with states rushing to redraw their congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms to eliminate minority districts.