Supreme Court strikes down Louisiana’s congressional map, limits use of race in drawing districts
by Stephen Dinan · The Washington TimesThe Supreme Court issued a major ruling Wednesday preserving but tightening the use of the Voting Rights Act, saying the iconic law can’t be used to force states to add more minority districts to their maps unless there is clear evidence of racial discrimination.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the 6-3 majority, warned that the iconic 1965 law had come to be used “cynically” to force states to add more Democrat-friendly minority seats, under the guise of protecting minority voters.
That, he said, can no longer stand.
“The Constitution imposes some important restrictions on the states’ exercise of this power, but they are otherwise free to draw districts as they please,” Justice Alito wrote in a decision joined by the high court’s five other GOP appointees.
The ruling doesn’t strip states of the ability to use race in their own decision-making. But it will take away a legal tool Democrats have used to force GOP-led states in the South to carve out more minority-heavy — and pro-Democrat — seats than they would otherwise have done.
The ruling strikes down Louisiana’s current congressional map, which includes two majority-Black districts.
The state had been forced to draw that map at the orders of a federal judge, who ruled that the previous map, with just one Black district, wasn’t favorable enough to the state’s Black voters. Justice Alito said that focus on Black voters was, itself, “an unconstitutional gerrymander.”
More broadly, the new decision gives legal backing to other states such as Texas, where lawmakers dismantled a number of Democrat-friendly, minority-heavy seats last year, and replaced them with more GOP-leaning congressional districts.
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That ignited a redistricting war that is still playing out.
Justice Elena Kagan penned the dissent for the court’s three Democratic appointees, saying the ruling overturned court precedent and the intent of Congress in writing and updating the Voting Rights Act.
She said the decision is the latest in a string of rulings that has achieved a “now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”
“I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity. I dissent,” she wrote.
She dispensed with the usual protocol, where justices note they “respectfully” dissent.
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The 1965 law was enacted to counter active discrimination against minority voters, particularly Black voters. It gave the federal government extensive powers to intrude on state elections, down to the location of polling places, and it gave voters themselves legal avenues to challenge election procedures.
It was enacted at a time when party and race weren’t so closely tied. In the South, for example, the bigger divide was between White and Black than Democrat and Republican.
Justice Alito said that has changed.
“And if, as a result of this progress, it is hard to find pertinent evidence relating to intentional present-day voting discrimination, that is cause for celebration,” he wrote.
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The court’s two Black members split on the ruling. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee, sided with Justice Kagan, while Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush pick, was part of the majority.
He wrote his own opinion, saying he would have gone even further in blocking racial challenges to voting district lines.
“This Court should never have interpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effectively give racial groups ’an entitlement to roughly proportional representation,’” Justice Thomas wrote.
After the 2020 Census gave Louisiana six seats in the U.S. House, the Legislature drew a map intended to give Republicans five of the state’s six seats, with the sixth, where a majority of voters were Black, electing a Democrat.
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Black voters challenged that map, arguing that as 33% of the state’s population, they should have two districts where they were a majority of the population.
Under court prodding, the state Legislature delivered the new map ahead of the 2024 election, creating two Black-heavy districts — including one that stretched 250 miles across the state in order to collect enough Black voters.
Democrats won both of the seats, reducing the GOP to a 4-2 margin in the state’s delegation.
Non-Black voters challenged that new map, saying it forced race into what was essentially a political exercise.
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The case is Louisiana v. Callais. Phillip Callais was the lead challenger, arguing the map that carved out two Black districts was discriminatory.
The Supreme Court first held oral argument during its 2024-25 term but held the case over to this term and ordered new arguments focused specifically on the tension between the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution.
Justice Alito said the Constitution has allowed only a few exceptions to the general bar on racial discrimination. That includes where human safety is in play — such as the possibility of a race riot in a prison — or where the discrimination is “remediating” a specific past instance of discrimination.
He said the Voting Rights Act fits under that second test, but only where the discrimination can be readily proved.
Voting rights advocates were dismayed by the ruling.
“This decision opens the door to racially discriminatory maps that are harder to challenge,” said Michael McNulty, policy director at Issue One. “Without a strong Section 2, politicians will be incentivized to draw maps that lock voters of color and candidates out of power, chipping away at one of democracy’s core tenets: equal representation under the law.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.