The Supreme Court’s conservative justices appeared likely to strip Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of all power to protect against racially discriminatory redistricting during arguments in the case of Louisiana v. Callais on Wednesday.
Such a decision could have monumental consequences for the future of Black political representation across the South, and potentially enable Republican legislatures to redraw maps in a way that helps bring to fruition President Donald Trump’s goal of one-party rule in Washington.
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The complicated case centers on the question of whether, and how, race is allowed to be used when drawing congressional maps. The case arose from a challenge brought by white Louisianans to a remedial map the state legislature drew in 2024 that created a second Black majority district. The legislature drew that map in response to a district court ruling in Robinson v. Louisiana that the initial map adopted by the state in 2022 violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate based on race, when it failed to draw a second district. The white Louisianans then challenged the new remedial map for discriminating against them, and a district court agreed.
The case, or a version of it, was actually heard at the Supreme Court earlier this year. In March, both the Black Robinson plaintiffs and the state of Louisiana argued at the Supreme Court that the map featuring a second Black majority district should be upheld. But the court declined to issue a decision, instead ordering it to be reargued with a new question: whether Section 2 is unconstitutional. Louisiana promptly switched sides to argue it was unconstitutional, and the Trump administration joined to present a different mechanism to gut Section 2.
During arguments, it appeared unlikely the conservative justices would go so far as to find Section 2 to be unconstitutional overall. Instead, they honed on the argument made by the Trump administration, which claimed that partisan considerations should trump racial discrimination in map-drawing. This would make Section 2 cases effectively impossible to bring in the future.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act bans electoral practices that lead to “a denial or abridgment of the right … to vote” and leave minority voters with “less opportunity … to participate in the political processes and to elect representatives of their choice.” In 1982, Congress amended Section 2 to require courts to look at the racially discriminatory effects of a district map and not just the question of whether the map as drawn was intentionally discriminatory. Nearly all Black-majority districts in the South were drawn after this amendment.
Demonstrators gather outside the Supreme Court during arguments in Louisiana v. Callais on Wednesday. Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images
When bringing a Section 2 claim of racial discrimination in court, plaintiffs must show that a given map prevented a racial minority from electing a candidate of their choosing where there is geographic racial segregation and significant racially polarized voting, where, say, white and Black voters predominantly vote for one party over the other.
The Trump administration, however, now argues that courts can’t distinguish racially polarized voting from partisan voting in the South — where Black voters are almost all Democrats and white voters are almost all Republicans. Since the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause found that federal courts could not rule on partisan gerrymandering claims, a Republican legislature can draw a map that favors Republicans, even at the expense of Black voters, because their real motivation is partisanship, the Trump administration argues.
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When courts hear Section 2 challenges, they must consider whether a remedial map that creates a majority-minority district provides the same partisan balance as the map presented by the state, according to the Trump administration. This would enable Southern states to eliminate existing majority Black and Latino districts by arguing they did so for partisan reasons alone, and thus effectively neuter Section 2.
This solution would also allow the conservative justices to tell themselves that they are not contradicting the 2022 decision in Allen v. Milligan, a nearly identical case that required Alabama to draw a second Black majority district with a ruling of 5-4, deputy Solicitor General Hashim Moopan argued.
Nor would they need to overrule the 1985 precedent in Thornburg v. Gingles that set out a multipart test that courts use to review Section 2 districting cases. It would instead be a “clarification,” Moopan said in response to a leading question from Justice Amy Coney Barrett that sought that very answer.
In Allen v. Milligan, Chief Justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh joined with the court’s three liberals to uphold Section 2. Now that they are presented with a different ― and better, in their opinion ― argument; it appears both are ready to change position and gut it.
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When questioning NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Janai Nelson, arguing on behalf of Black Louisianans, Roberts noted that the outcome of the Allen decision was unique to “Alabama’s particular challenge.”
“We were looking at Alabama’s suggestion of how to apply its body of evidence under existing precedent,” Roberts said.
And when questioning Moopan, Roberts sought to elicit a confirmation that the Trump administration’s argument would be “consistent” with the Roberts’ decision in Allen.
For his part, Kavanaugh focused heavily on two issues: the question of partisanship presented by the Trump administration and whether Section 2 should have an end date.
(Left to right) Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Associate U.S. Supreme Court Clarence Thomas, Associate U.S. Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court John Roberts, during the 60th presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025. Chip Somodevilla/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“The court’s cases in a variety of contexts have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometime for a long period of time, decades in some cases, but that they should not be indefinite. It should have an end point. What exactly do you think the end point should be?” Kavanaugh asked Nelson.
Since Section 2 does not require race-based remedies and it would be self-nullifying when racially polarized voting ceases, it does not need an end point, Nelson replied. If the court decided that an end point is necessary, it should give advance warning, she argued. She further noted, correctly, that, “There is no precedent to suggest that a statute must dissolve on its own simply because it must require a race remedy.”
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Signalling his clear interest in the Trump administration’s position, Kavanaugh asked each of the four lawyers who argued before the court what they thought about the core argument that courts must consider partisan political considerations over race in map drawing.
If the court chooses to adopt the Trump administration’s proposal and gut Section 2, or if it goes even further and finds it unconstitutional, the effect will be “catastrophic,” Nelson said.
“If we take Louisiana as an example, every congressional member who is Black was elected from a VRA opportunity district,” Nelson said. “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.”
Changing the way courts review Section 2 or finding it unconstitutional would throw into question maps with majority-minority districts across the South. If the court issues a ruling in Louisiana v. Callais before the end of 2025, Republican legislatures could move to eliminate up to 19 of them ahead of the 2026 election. This would largely fulfill Trump’s desire to pad Republican House majorities so that he never faces congressional oversight.
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Nelson provided a stark warning to the justices were they to issue such a decision to upend decades-old precedent.
“The court said it must be concerned about changing its decisions or rejecting stare decisis in cases that involve a sensitive political context like this one,” Nelson said. “That calls the court’s legitimacy into question in a unique way. … Any further neutering of Section 2 would resurrect the 15th amendment as a mere parchment promise.”
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