The Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court appears on the verge of reshaping one of the most important remaining tools in federal voting rights law, signaling it may impose stricter limits on how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is enforced in redistricting cases. The implications of such a move are vast. Section 2, originally enacted as part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and strengthened by Congress in 1982, prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race. For decades, it has served as the primary legal mechanism through which minority voters have challenged district maps that dilute their political power. Now, in a case arising from Louisiana, the Court’s conservative majority appears open to narrowing how plaintiffs can prove violations, especially in situations where race and partisanship overlap — a dynamic that defines much of modern Southern politics. Civil rights advocates warn that weakening Section 2 could significantly alter congressional representation nationwide, potentially enabling Republican-controlled legislatures to redraw as many as 19 congressional districts to their political advantage.
The case before the Court, Louisiana v. Callais, stems from Louisiana’s congressional redistricting following the 2020 census. Black residents make up roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population, yet the state’s 2022 congressional map created only one majority-Black district out of six. A federal district court found that arrangement likely violated Section 2 because it diluted Black voting strength by concentrating Black voters into a single district while dispersing others across majority-white districts where their preferred candidates would likely lose. Under longstanding Supreme Court precedent established in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), plaintiffs alleging vote dilution must show three things: that the minority group is sufficiently large and geographically compact to form a majority in an additional district; that the group is politically cohesive; and that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat the minority’s preferred candidates. Applying that test, the district court concluded Louisiana likely should have drawn a second majority-Black distric
