Supreme Court Strikes Louisiana District and Narrows Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Wednesday that Louisiana’s congressional map, which included a second majority-Black district, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, a decision that sharply narrows the Voting Rights Act’s use in redistricting, the Associated Press, NPR and NBC News reported.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court’s six conservatives that “allowing race to play any part in government decisionmaking represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” according to the AP. NBC News reported that states can now almost never consider race when drawing maps to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, although Alito said extreme situations might justify it. NPR reported that the court reinterpreted Section 2, so that plaintiffs challenging maps as diluting minority voting power must now prove discriminatory intent, not merely discriminatory effect. Alito wrote that the focus of Section 2 must be “intentional racial discrimination.”

Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent for the three liberal justices that the “gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in peril” and that states can now “without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” the AP reported. Justice Clarence Thomas, a longtime critic of the law, wrote separately that the ruling should “largely put an end” to a system that he saw as unlawfully dividing people into districts based on race, NBC News said.

Reaction split along party lines. A White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, called it “a complete and total victory for American voters,” adding, “The color of one’s skin should not dictate which congressional district you belong in,” the AP reported. Edward Greim, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told St. Louis Public Radio the ruling moves the country closer to a “colorblind society,” NPR said. Rep. Cleo Fields, whose district was struck down, said the effect is “to make it far harder for minority communities to challenge redistricting maps,” and former President Barack Obama said the court seems “intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy,” according to the AP. Rick Hasen, a UCLA election-law expert, told NPR that “what’s left of the Voting Rights Act is a hollow shell of what it was before.”

The immediate effect on this year’s midterms is limited because candidate filing deadlines and primaries have passed in many states, the AP and NPR reported. Louisiana, which has a population that is 30 percent Black, must redraw its map, likely with one fewer Democratic-leaning district, NPR said. Lawmakers and candidates in Tennessee and Georgia quickly called for new districts, NPR reported, and the full effect may come in 2028, according to the AP. Nicholas Stephanopoulos, an election-law scholar, estimates nearly 70 of the 435 House districts are protected by Section 2, the AP reported.

Mr. Trump called it the “kind of ruling I like,” the AP reported, after urging some states to redraw their maps. NPR reported that hours after the decision, Florida lawmakers approved a new congressional map aimed at creating four more Republican-leaning districts; the governor’s office cited the Louisiana ruling, though NPR said the new districts do not target those likely protected by Section 2.