The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday appeared poised to significantly weaken a key Voting Rights Act provision that prohibits states from diluting the power of minority voters — a pivotal case that could reshape elections and redistricting battles in Republican-led states ahead of the midterms.
The case, Louisiana v. Callais, was first argued in March and centers on whether Louisiana’s 2024 congressional map — which added a second majority-Black district — amounts to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Its outcome could determine how states nationwide apply the Voting Rights Act in future redistricting cycles.
Justices ordered both sides to return to court for a second hearing to revisit arguments in the case centered on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and asked them to submit briefs on whether Louisiana’s creation of a second majority-Black congressional district under the VRA violates the 14th or 15th Amendments to the Constitution.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other conservative justices appeared open to the idea that Congress, in passing the 1965 law, may have intended a sort of sunset period for Section 2, allowing it to weaken over time. That possibility was invoked by Kavanaugh several times during Wednesday's arguments, as he pressed lawyers for the state of Louisiana and the NAACP for more specifics.
JUDGES SAY THEY'LL REDRWA LOUISIANA CONGRESSIONAL MAP THEMSELVES IF LAWMAKERS CAN'T
The court’s ruling could carry major implications for future elections, with critics warning that siding with the state could further erode protections for minority voters under the Voting Rights Act.
Janai Nelson, a lawyer for the NAACP arguing on behalf of Black voters, argued Wednesday that siding with Louisiana’s request to reverse the map would be a "staggering reversal of precedent," and a ruling that she argued "would throw maps across the country into chaos."
"If we take Louisiana as one example, every congressional member who is Black was elected from a Voting Rights Act-opportunity district," she told the justices. "We only have the diversity that we see across the south, for example, because of litigation that forced the creation of opportunity districts under the Voting Rights Act."
"Every justice in Louisiana has been elected through a VRA opportunity district, and nearly all legislative representatives have been elected in those same districts. So Louisiana alone is an example of how important it is to have Section 2 continue to be enforced to create these opportunities," she continued.
Invalidating Section 2 in Louisiana "would be pretty catastrophic," Nelson added.
Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett signaled skepticism about keeping Section 2 of the VRA in place as is. They each pressed Nelson about whether there should be a time duration limit on the intentional use of race in drawing voting districts under the law — prompting Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to jump in to clarify that, since the VRA is derived from the 15th Amendment, it does not have a time limit.
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Louisiana Solicitor General Ben Aguiñaga, arguing for the state, urged the Supreme Court to prohibit the use of race as a factor in redistricting.
"We are 50 years removed from Gingles," he said, referring to the 1986 Supreme Court case Thornburg v. Gingles, which established a three-part legal standard to determine whether minority votes were being diluted under the Voting Rights Act.
These standards "have placed states in impossible situations, where the only sure demand is more racial discrimination for more decades," he said. He argued the racial considerations required under VRA are tantamount to a system of "government-mandated racial balancing" and urged them to be rejected outright.
He fielded tough questions from Jackson after he was asked whether, in the states’ view, identifying and remedying racial discrimination is a "compelling interest."
"If I’m right that Section 2 is about identifying the problem and requiring some remedy, I don't understand why your answer to Justice Kagan's question about, ‘Is this a compelling state interest,’ would be ‘no,’" Jackson said.
"The answer is obviously yes," Jackson said, raising her voice just slightly. "You have an interest in remedying the effects of racial discrimination that we identify using this tool. Whether you go too far in your remedy is another issue."
Louisiana has abruptly changed its position since March.
Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill asked the Supreme Court in August to invalidate the 2024 map — an about-face from its earlier position — and urged the justices to rule more broadly that race-based redistricting is unconstitutional.
Murrill said that the 14th Amendment "commands that the government ‘may never use race as a stereotype or negative.’ Yet race-based redistricting rests on an invidious stereotype: that all minorities, by virtue of their membership in their racial class, think alike and share the same interests and voting preferences."
"Race-based redistricting is fundamentally contrary to our Constitution," she said.
A group of Black voters and civil rights groups, meanwhile, urged the court to leave in place the newer map, which it said "comport[s] with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment guarantees of equal voting rights and the VRA’s requirements."
The Trump administration also joined the case in the Supreme Court’s second round of arguments.
Hashim Mooppan, the principal deputy solicitor general, argued that the congressional map in Louisiana drafted in response to Section 2 of the VRA could also be construed as a "reverse partisan gerrymander" and one that is also based on "purely racial" considerations.
"I think that is a constitutional problem, and the test we've identified in our brief would solve that problem," he said.
Justice Alito also seemed inclined to rule in favor of weakening Section 2 of the VRA, and used his time to press Mooppan about issues of congruence and proportionality.
The court’s 6-3 ruling on a related case two years prior could prove to be telling. Justices in 2023 rejected race-conscious admissions policies at two universities, Harvard and the University of North Carolina, abruptly ending 45 years of precedent. The court held in SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. University of North Carolina (UNC) that the admissions policies at both schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which required equal treatment for potential students.
NEW MAJORITY-BLACK LOUISIANA HOUSE DISTRICT REJECTED, NOVEMBER ELECTION MAP STILL UNCERTAIN
Louisiana has redrawn its congressional map twice since the 2020 census. The first version — which included only one majority-Black district — was blocked by a federal court and later by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022.
Both courts sided with the NAACP voters, and the Fifth Circuit ordered the state to adopt by January 2024 a new state redistricting map.
The Supreme Court’s request for additional arguments comes at a pivotal time, as several Republican-led states have attempted to aggressively push through new congressional maps of their own.
They also argued in filings to the Supreme Court that non-Black voters failed to show the direct harm required for equal protection claims or prove race was the main factor in redrawing the map.
It's unclear how soon the court will rule on the matter. But lawyers arguing the case on behalf of the NAACP and Black voters in the state have warned that a ruling in favor of Louisiana could have a staggering impact on races in 2026 and beyond.
A recent report from the nonprofit groups Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund estimates that an overhaul of the VRA could swing an estimated 12 Democratic-held House districts in favor of Republican candidates.
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