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More than a decade after the Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and just two years after it declined to unravel another, the high court on Wednesday will hear a consequential challenge to Louisiana’s congressional map that could further weaken the law’s protections for minority voters.
The consolidated cases, Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais, could redefine how courts interpret Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — a provision that for decades has been used to ensure minority communities have an equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates.
At issue is whether Louisiana’s 2024 congressional map, which created a second majority-Black district to remedy a prior Voting Rights Act violation, unconstitutionally relied on race. The outcome could reverberate nationwide, potentially curbing the use of race-conscious remedies in redistricting and marking a dramatic shift in American voting rights law.
“This is a gut check for the court,” said Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington office. “A decision that leaves the current understanding of Section 2 in grave doubt opens up, unfortunately, a lot of chaos throughout the country.”
A challenge to race-based mapmaking
The dispute dates back to 2022, when Republican state lawmakers approved new congressional boundaries following the 2020 Census. The original map featured five majority-White districts and one majority-Black district, even though Black residents make up about one-third of Louisiana’s population.
A group of Black voters sued, arguing the plan diluted their voting power in violation of Section 2. A federal judge agreed and ordered the state to draw a remedial map with two majority-Black districts.
Lawmakers responded in 2024 by redrawing the 6th Congressional District — stretching it from Shreveport to Baton Rouge — to give Black voters a narrow majority. Democrat Cleo Fields, who is Black, won the seat that November.
But a group of 12 White voters challenged the new lines, claiming the district amounted to a racial gerrymander that violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. A divided federal panel sided with the challengers, finding the legislature had relied too heavily on race.
When the case reached the Supreme Court last term, justices initially deferred a decision. In August, they agreed to rehear the dispute and broadened the scope, asking whether intentionally creating a second majority-minority district — even to comply with the Voting Rights Act — violates the Constitution.
Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill and Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga, both Republicans, argued that the Constitution forbids using race as a factor in mapmaking. “Our Constitution sees neither Black voters nor White voters; it sees only American voters,” they wrote.
The stakes for Section 2
The case puts Section 2 squarely on the line. Congress first enacted the Voting Rights Act in 1965 under its authority to enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments, which guarantee equal protection and prohibit racial discrimination in voting. The law was amended in 1982 and reauthorized in 2006 with bipartisan support.
“Section 2 has been a durable centerpiece of the bipartisan legislation passed to make real our shared, national commitment,” a group of former Republican lawmakers wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief. “It stands as a monument to Congress’s ability to act as the Constitution’s Framers intended.”
The Supreme Court last addressed Section 2 in 2023, when it upheld a lower court ruling that Alabama’s congressional map diluted Black voting power. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s three liberals in the 5-4 decision — a rare victory for civil rights advocates.
But Kavanaugh hinted that race-based remedies could not continue indefinitely. “The authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future,” he wrote in a concurring opinion.
Both Roberts and Kavanaugh will again be pivotal. The two conservative justices also joined the majority last term in ending affirmative action in college admissions, ruling that race could no longer be used as a factor in higher education decisions.
Edward Blum, whose group successfully challenged affirmative action, said the same principle should apply to elections. “If racial diversity is not a compelling interest to treat people differently in education, it must follow that creating race-based election districts will not stand,” said Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions and director of the Project on Fair Representation.
A court skeptical of race-based policies
Roberts has long expressed discomfort with racial classifications. In 2006, he wrote, “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” Seven years later, he authored the majority opinion that dismantled Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required states with histories of discrimination to obtain federal approval before changing voting laws. “Our country has changed,” he wrote then.
“America is no longer in the 1960s,” Blum said Monday. “To base election districts primarily on race no longer reflects who we are as a nation.”
Voting rights advocates warn that weakening Section 2 could gut one of the last remaining federal protections for minority voters. “Because it’s so difficult to prove and is one of the only avenues that minority voters have to challenge these districts, it could make it incredibly hard to achieve equal representation,” said Sara Rohani, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
The Trump administration has sided with Louisiana, urging the court to tighten the standards for proving racial vote dilution. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Section 2 has been misused as “a form of electoral race-based affirmative action.”
A decision is expected by late June or early July — one that could determine how far states can go in considering race when drawing the political map of American democracy.
