The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down Louisiana’s congressional district map lines, ruling the creation of a second Black-majority district in a state where about a third of residents are Black represented an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by the court’s five conservative justices, the Supreme Court held that the Voting Rights Act did not obligate Louisiana to draw a second majority-minority district. Alito’s decision said the Legislature’s use of racial data in drawing a second Black-majority district was unconstitutional.
The case, Louisiana v. Callais, has been closely watched by voting rights activists who had feared the court would gut the Voting Rights Act. Several non-Black voters challenged Louisiana’s new map after the Legislature redrew it in 2024, arguing they had been denied their rights by the creation of a new district.
The court agreed.
“The Constitution almost never permits a State to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny,” Alito wrote.
In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court’s liberal wing, said the decision “will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.”
The immediate result of the decision is likely to impact only one district in Congress, held by U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields, a Democrat. But in the longer term, it is likely to pour fuel on the mid-decade redistricting wars that have broken out across the country.
Though it is too late for most states — with the exception of Florida — to redraw district lines ahead of this year’s elections, Republican-led states are likely to revisit their own district lines in the coming years, potentially dismantling many majority-minority districts across the South.
In a statement, U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, who holds the state’s other Black-majority district, called the ruling “a devastating blow to the promise of equal representation in our democracy.”
Reading her dissent from the bench to underscore her disagreement, Kagan presaged the assault on majority-minority districts ahead.
“After today, those districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long,” Kagan wrote. “If other States follow Louisiana’s lead, the minority citizens residing there will no longer have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. And minority representation in government institutions will sharply decline.”
Legal experts said the decision would not completely erase Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits states from denying or abridging the right to vote on the basis of race or color — but that it would make applications of Section 2 much more difficult to overcome.
“It is hard to overstate how much this weakens the Voting Rights Act,” wrote Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA School of Law. “Justice Alito knows exactly what he’s doing: make it seem like he’s not gutting the Voting Rights Act through technical language, turning both the statute and the Constitution on its head.”
Correction: An earlier edition of this story misidentified the district at the heart of the case. That district is held by U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields.