Background
On conclusion of the 2020 United States census, the state of Louisiana was assigned six seats in the United States House of Representatives. The census also found that about one third of the state were black. The Louisiana State Legislature, where the Republican Party held a majority, approved of new maps that were largely unchanged from those in the previous decade, giving the state five districts non-black majorities and one with a black majority. [1]
The new maps were challenged in court by black voters, claiming it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which disallows discrimination by race in elections. Federal district judge Shelly Dick ruled in June 2022 that the new map did violate the VRA and ordered the legislature to draw up a new map that respected two black-majority districts to reflect the census results. [2] The state's secretary of state Kyle Ardoin requested a stay of Dick's order to the Fifth Circuit, which refused to grant the motion. Ardoin then sought relief from the Supreme Court, which granted a stay of the order until they had decided on a similar redistricting case from Alabama, Allen v. Milligan , where the state's new redistricting map had reduced the number of black-majority districts compared to their proportion of the state's population. [3]
The Supreme Court ruled in Allen v. Milligan in June 2023 that Alabama's new redistricting map violated the VRA. [4] In the wake of that decision, the Supreme Court lifted its stay of Dick's ruling, returning the case to the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit ruled that the state legislature had to come up with a new map respecting the Allen decision by January 30, 2024, as to be ready for the 2024 general elections, or else Dick would draw up a new map. [5] The state legislature held a special session in January 2024 to approve the new map, with Louisiana's 6th congressional district ending up as the state's new majority-black district. [6]
On issuance of the new maps, a group calling themselves "non-African-American voters" filed suit against the state, claiming the new districts were racially gerrymandered and violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. [6] As this was a constitutional challenge rather than a statutory challenge, the case was heard by a panel of three federal district judges from the Western District of Louisiana, rather than a single judge; the panel ruled in a 2-1 decision that the new map was racially gerrymandered and blocked use of the new map in May 2024. The state sought a stay from the Supreme Court claiming it was too close to the election to derive a new map. The Supreme Court ordered that the state use the new January 2024 maps with the second black-majority district for the 2024 elections due to the timing, but did not rule on the merits of the panel's decision. [7]
Supreme Court
Two separate petitions were made to the Supreme Court to hear the challenge on the district panel discussion, one from the state itself (Louisiana v. Callais) and another from black voters and groups like NAACP (Robinson v. Callais). The Supreme Court certified both cases and consolidated them in November 2024. [8]
Oral hearings were first held on March 24, 2025. [9] The court issued an order on June 27, 2025, to hold a second oral session in the 2025 term, with only Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting. [10]
During the recess prior to the 2025 term, the Supreme Court issued an order asking all parties to submit briefs addressing whether the new maps violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Several news commentators said this move suggested the court was considering that complying with Section 2 of the VRA would be unconstitutional, further weakening the VRA. [11] [12] [13] Among these briefs, Louisiana submitted a brief stating the State was no longer defending its position in the case at the Supreme Court, and instead was arguing to advance the claim that the new maps violated the 14th and 15th Amendments. [14]
The second oral session for the case was heard on October 15, 2025. Court observers said that the court's conservative majority appeared ready to limit the use of the VRA for redistricting, with the concept that the VRA could not be used indefinitely and had a time limit, similar to the arguments used to end affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard . While observers did not believe the court would rule Section 2 of the VRA unconstitutional, they suggested the conservative justices would significantly limit it by increasing the scrutiny to determine when racial discrimination had arisen from redistricting. [15] [16]
According to some analysts, a decision that would remove or reduce the impact of the VRA from this case could potentially give the Republicans a large number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives from redistricting in the southeastern states, where the VRA has generally prevented Republican-controlled legislatures from crafting racially-biased districts. The New York Times estimates that without the strength of the VRA, up to 12 seats in these states could be flipped from Democrat-leaning to Republican-leaning, which would give the Republicans a far greater majority in the House. [17] [18] The timing of the ruling would also be critical in relation to the 2026 general election. Some Republican-controlled states had already initiated mid-census partisan redistricting in mid-2025, such as Texas, backed by president Donald Trump to secure more Republican representatives in the House. [17] Democrat-controlled states have proposed their own redistricting to counter these changes, such as the in-progress attempt in California to be voted on in the 2025 general state election. [19]
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