Journalism of Courage
The Supreme Court appeared poised on Wednesday to weaken a key provision of a landmark civil rights law by sharply limiting the ability of lawmakers to use race as a factor in drawing voting maps, which could lead to widespread redistricting efforts.
If the justices determine that lawmakers cannot consider race when drawing districts, the consequences for the country’s political balance could be sweeping. The decision could end the practice, endorsed by the court for decades, of crafting congressional districts with the purpose of helping minority voters elect the candidates of their choice.
Republican state legislatures could use the ruling to eliminate around a dozen Democratic-held House districts across the South, according to a New York Times analysis.
The court typically issues major rulings by late June or early July, but could rule more quickly in the voting case. It is not clear if states could act in time for the 2026 midterm elections, should the justices agree to upend the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The case examines whether Louisiana lawmakers violated the Constitution when they adopted a new electoral map in 2024, creating the state’s second majority-Black district.
During Wednesday’s oral argument, several of the court’s conservative justices appeared focused on whether there should be a sunset to using race as a factor in creating electoral maps, a requirement that stemmed from 1960s-era protections aimed at undoing generations of efforts to suppress the power of Black voters.
“This court’s cases, in a variety of contexts, have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time — sometimes for a long period of time, decades in some cases — but that they should not be indefinite, and should have an end point,” said Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who is expected to be a key vote.
“What exactly do you think the end point should be, or how would we know, for the intentional use of race to create districts?” Kavanaugh then asked a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who argued to uphold the Voting Rights Act.
That question — whether there should be a time limit on using race-based ways to address harms — was the focus of the oral argument.
In recent years, the court’s conservative majority has shown considerable skepticism toward policies that use race to help resolve discrimination. In 2023, the justices struck down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
That same month, however, the court announced that race could be a factor in drafting electoral maps, rejecting an Alabama congressional map that the court found had diluted the power of Black voters.
Still, Edward D. Greim, a lawyer for a group of white voters who challenged Louisiana’s voting map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, argued Wednesday that it was time to retire race as a consideration in redistricting.
Greim said that “in today’s America,” voters like the white plaintiffs were “still being racially stereotyped” to place them in particular electoral districts.
“If it was ever acceptable under our colorblind Constitution to do this, it was never intended to continue indefinitely,” he added.
Janai Nelson, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, pointed to those recent cases as evidence that the court had reaffirmed that race could be considered when choosing electoral maps, to ensure voters are fully represented.
“It is very clear that the case law before this court supports the use of race as needed once there has been a showing of specified discrimination,” Nelson said.
The court’s three liberal justices expressed deep concerns about eliminating race from the planning of voting maps.
Justice Elena Kagan asked Nelson what would happen if the key section of the Voting Rights Act were “to cease to operate” to prevent the dilution of minority votes.
“I think the results would be pretty catastrophic,” Nelson responded. “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.”
Hashim M. Mooppan, a principal deputy solicitor general, suggested that the justices could leave the key provision of the Voting Rights Act, called Section 2, in place, but still change how voting maps are judged when determining if they illegally dilute minority votes.
Mooppan also suggested that the court could modify the test it uses to evaluate potential Voting Rights Act violations, to give states more leeway to justify maps based on a state’s political objectives.
Kavanaugh appeared receptive to that argument, calling it “a real innovation.”
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s liberals, countered that “the bottom line” of their argument would have the same result — to “just get rid of” the force of the Voting Rights Act to protect minority voters.
Mooppan said that many Black members of Congress hailed from districts that were not majority minority. “None of these positions is going to lead to there being no Black representation in Congress or anything remotely approaching that,” he said.
The Voting Rights Act, one of the central legislative achievements of the civil rights movement, banned discriminatory practices like literacy tests that had been used to disenfranchise people.
Wednesday’s legal battle can be traced back to the 2020 census, which showed an increase in Louisiana’s population of Black adults. While Black Louisianans made up about a third of the state’s population, there was only one majority-Black congressional district out of six districts.
After the census, state lawmakers revisited the map and passed a version that still had only one majority-Black district. Two groups of Black voters sued in 2022, asserting that state legislators had violated the Voting Rights Act by packing Black voters into one district and diluting their voting power.
A federal judge agreed, finding that the map likely did violate the statute. State lawmakers then proposed another map in January 2024, which included a second majority-Black district — a long, narrow one that wound from the southeast part of the state to the northwest.
State lawmakers claimed that they had crafted the map with politics, not race, in mind, protecting valuable Republican incumbents, including House Speaker Mike Johnson.
But shortly after lawmakers approved that map, a dozen white voters sued, arguing that the new map was an illegal racial gerrymander that had caused them to suffer “unlawful, intentional discrimination based on race.”
In April 2024, a divided panel of three federal judges agreed, striking down the new map. Louisiana then appealed to the Supreme Court. The justices paused the lower court’s order, allowing Louisiana’s new map to be used in the 2024 election. Democrats picked up a seat, as voters in the newly created district elected Cleo Fields, a longtime party figure from Baton Rouge. Fields is Black.
The justices heard the case, Louisiana v. Callais, in the spring. But instead of issuing a decision in late June or early July, the justices, in a rare move, ordered new arguments for their next term, which began this month. Rearguments can be a signal that the justices are poised to take a broader action in a case. In 2009, the court called for reargument in Citizens United, a campaign finance case that turned from a minor case into a blockbuster, clearing the way for unlimited campaign spending by corporations.
The court offered no explanation for punting on the case, but several weeks later, the justices announced that they would hear arguments on a more expansive question: whether Louisiana’s “intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the 14th or 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”
That question suggested that the justices appeared to be considering holding the provision of the Voting Rights Act that has been used to challenge redistricting plans unconstitutional.
In the months since the justices announced that they would hear arguments again, the Louisiana officials who had defended the map essentially switched sides, aligning with the white voter plaintiffs.
Outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s attorney general, appeared encouraged by the oral argument, saying that the court had doled out “difficult and confusing precedent” to legislators in the past.
A crowd of demonstrators also gathered in support of the law. A loudspeaker blasted “Freedom” by Beyoncé, and people chanted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” A majority of the demonstrators wore black T-shirts that read “Black Voters Matter” and “It’s About Us.”
