Supreme Court to weigh use of race in redistricting

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Monday over the fate of Louisiana’s second Black-majority congressional district, in a pair of cases that could shape how state lawmakers can use race when drawing new congressional maps.

Parties in the case have urged the justices to clarify the “breathing room” states get between the statutory and constitutional requirements of drawing district lines, as part of the tangled court fights over the state’s redistricting efforts since the 2020 census.

On Louisiana’s first congressional map, a judge found the state violated the discrimination protections in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and ordered the map redrawn. Then, on that second map, a separate court found the state violated the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on racial discrimination and ordered it redrawn again.

“Louisiana is tired,” the state said in its Supreme Court brief, citing the years of litigation over the racial gerrymandering claims.

The sides have asked for more sweeping decisions about how states can provide opportunities for minority voters to elect representatives of their choice — as required by the VRA — without those efforts emphasizing race so much they run afoul of the Constitution.

In one direction, Louisiana seeks a ruling that would mean federal courts could not review constitutional racial gerrymandering claims at all, similar to a Supreme Court ruling on partisan gerrymandering claims several years ago.

In the other direction, voters challenging the state’s second map want the justices to rule states should face the highest level of court scrutiny to show they did not violate the 14th Amendment in their efforts to carve up the state’s districts to comply with the VRA.

But such major changes in the intersection of the VRA and 14th Amendment seems less likely considering recent Supreme Court decisions, some experts say.

Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University who served as the White House senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights, said the justices last year in a South Carolina case decided that partisan concerns could justify the placement of Black voters in one district over another.

“Look, this is a very conservative court, and I have been both surprised and wrong before. I’m just not predicting that this is the case where they want to revisit, effectively, a decision they already made last year,” Levitt said.

Levitt said his is “not expecting five justices to say that anytime you’re trying to comply with the Voting Rights Act it is unconstitutional.”

The original challengers to the first map want to keep the status quo — the second map that was used in the 2024 elections that resulted in a second Democratic member of the House from Louisiana — arguing the first court was correct to require a new map, but the second court was wrong to require a new map.

The justices are set to decide the case before the conclusion of the term at the end of June.

A long time coming

This is the third time the Supreme Court has dealt with litigation over Louisiana’s congressional map in the last four years.

The first map the state drew after the 2020 census had a Black majority in one of its six congressional districts, the New Orleans-based seat held by Democratic Rep. Troy Carter. That plan faced a successful challenge under the VRA from civil rights groups and Black voters who argued that the map deliberately limited the power of Black voters.

The Supreme Court temporarily paused that first redrawing of the map while a separate case over Alabama’s congressional map played out. Then, Louisiana drew the second map last year with a second Black-majority district, which stretched from Baton Rouge to Shreveport.

A separate group of voters then filed their own suit against the second map, which a three-judge panel found violated the Constitution. But the Supreme Court then paused the process of drawing a new map before the 2024 election and the state used the second plan last year. The second Black-majority district is currently held by Rep. Cleo Fields, a Democrat.

The plaintiffs challenging the second Louisiana map called the state’s second map an “odious racial gerrymander,” and argued the legislature started out with the assumption that it would draw a map with two Black-majority seats, making any plan constitutionally suspect.

“Louisiana’s uncompromisable two-majority-Black-seat quota out of six seats resulted in super-proportional majority-Black districts. It also forced the Legislature to sacrifice its professed goal of protecting incumbents — including one of five Republicans narrowly holding the U.S. House majority,” they argued in their brief.

The state has defended the second map, arguing that the legislature engaged in a “rescue operation” that sought to preserve districts for two prominent incumbents in northern Louisiana: Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Julia Letlow, an appropriator. In court filings, the state argued that if legislators had waited for the court in the VRA case to adopt a map, it could particularly have endangered Letlow’s district.

“That the incumbency-protection motivation was co-equal with — and almost certainly more important to the Legislature than — race ends this inquiry in the State’s favor,” the state argued in its brief.

Sweeping arguments

As an alternative to upholding the second map, Louisiana offered that the court could back out of litigation over racial gerrymandering claims entirely.

“Whether it fixes this broken system or shelves the system altogether, the Court should put an end to the extraordinary waste of time and resources that plagues the States after every redistricting cycle,” the brief said.

Sarah Brannon, deputy director for the ACLU’s voting rights project and an attorney for the challengers to the first map, told reporters on Thursday that a ruling that sides with Louisiana’s arguments would be “very bad precedent” and make it more difficult for voters to challenge racial gerrymanders.

Those challengers to the first map, who appealed the case to the Supreme Court, have argued that the court in ruling on the second map didn’t take proper account of the legislature’s stated goal to protect particular incumbents, which resulted in the shape of the second map.

“If left uncorrected, the panel’s decision will further inject the federal courts into the redistricting process and deprive states of the necessary flexibility to take account of other legislative priorities when they act to remedy identified violations of federal law,” the brief said.

A group of congressional Democrats, including Carter, argued in a brief in the case that the position put forward by the challengers to the second map, if adopted by the court, would “render efforts to comply with Section 2 of the VRA unconstitutional, which could thereby impact the redistricting processes of legislatures across our nation.”

Tight timing

The Supreme Court’s decision in the case may not be the end of litigation, according to Levitt and other experts.

Brannon told reporters that if the justices either uphold the decision or reverse it and send it back to a lower judge court, it would kick off another round of court fights that could trigger a third map-drawing process for the state.

In a court brief, the National Republican Congressional Committee urged the justices not to let the court fight drag out too long, as the state adopted a different primary process ahead of the 2026 midterms.

“Given this shortened deadline, the district court’s three-judge panel must begin preparing a new redistricting plan for the Louisiana congressional districts at the earliest possible date,” the brief said.

The cases are Louisiana v. Phillip Callais, et al. and Press Robinson, et al. v. Phillip Callais, et al.

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