Louisiana v Callais: The Republicans Justices Are Getting Ready to Finish Off the Voting Rights Act

In 2022, Louisiana Republican lawmakers enacted a congressional map that “packed” Black Louisianans into one district and “cracked” them across five others. This means out of six districts, only one is majority-Black, even though 1 in 3 Louisianans are Black. 

Under the Voting Rights Act, voters of color must have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. But voting in Louisiana is racially polarized, meaning that white majorities persistently vote as a bloc to defeat candidates whom Black voters prefer: To date, the state has never had a Black senator, and hasn’t elected a Black governor since Reconstruction, and no Louisiana congressional district other than the single majority-Black district has elected a Black representative. Thus, the only way Black Louisianans would have the equal opportunity the Voting Rights Act requires is if Louisiana were to create a second district in which Black Louisianans make up a majority.

Black voters in Louisiana sued, and federal courts determined that the map indeed violates Section 2 of the VRA, and ordered lawmakers to redraw the map and add a second majority-Black district. But then, a group of self-described “non-African American voters” sued to challenge that map, arguing that a map drawn to remedy an illegal racial gerrymander is itself an illegal racial gerrymander. If the Supreme Court agrees that there is no legal distinction between causing and curing race-based harm, Callais would rob actual victims of discrimination of the legal tools to do anything about it.