The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a Louisiana congressional map that it claimed violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
The case of Louisiana vs. Callais was brought by a group of voters who called themselves non-African American. They claimed that the congressional map was the product of racial gerrymandering. The map had created a second majority-Black district for upcoming elections.
While a main provision of the Voting Rights Act was not struck down, Justice Elena Kagan alluded in her dissent that the majority opinion of the SCOTUS basically rendered the rest of the VRA useless.
Louisiana was attempting to adopt a news map on the heels of the 2020 census. The map that was adopted in 2022 only had one majority-Black district out of the six the stated was allowed. A group of Black voters sued in federal court claiming that Section 2 was violated.
In 2022, a federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit also agreed.
The state’s 2024 map added a second majority Black district, which led to the election of Cleo Fields, a former congressperson who represented a different majority Black district in the 90s.
That’s when the plaintiffs in the most recent case sued, claiming that the equal protection clause of the Constitution was violated by sorting voters based on race.
The SCOTUS began hearing arguments in March 2025. Louisiana argued that they were following the direction of the lower courts that mandated that a second majority Black district be created and that protecting the Republican cohort Congress was the focus, not race.
The “non-American American” plaintiffs argued that it was unlikely that both race and politics were factored into the 2024 map.
The ruling came in at 6-3, with the three Liberal Justices Kagan, Sotomayor and Brown-Jackson dissenting. In a 36-page ruling, Justice Alito, noted Trump loyalist, said that “the Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race.”
He also said thar the question before the court was whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act should be added to the “very short list of compelling interests that can justify racial discrimination.”
According to Alito, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act guarantees voters of all races the opportunity to cast their votes for their desired candidate, but the candidate’s chance of winning can be affected by the options that a state has when drawing maps.
In short, the Conservative justices agreed that a Section 2 violation only happens when “the circumstances give rise to strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.”
Justice Kagan issued her own 48-page dissent on the ruling and noted that Congress should have made the decision, not the Supreme Court.
“The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—‘one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history.’ It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality,” she wrote. Only Congress is able to “say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court.”
The ruling has caused an uproar as the country heads into primary and run-off elections leading up to the midterm elections in November.
