Updated on Aug. 1 at 9:03 pm.
The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon instructed the parties in a Louisiana redistricting dispute to file new briefs on whether the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district violates the Constitution. The justices heard oral arguments in March in Louisiana v. Callais but did not ultimately issue a decision in the case before their summer recess began at the end of June. Instead, they indicated on June 27 that an order “specifying any additional questions to be addressed in supplemental briefing” would follow “[i]n due course.”
The case came to the court as a request by Louisiana and a group of Black voters to reinstate a map, adopted by the Louisiana Legislature in 2024, that created a second majority-Black congressional district in the state. The 2024 map responded to a ruling by a federal district court holding that a 2022 map that contained only one majority-Black district likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits election practices that result in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote. The group of Black voters seeking to revive the 2024 map in the proceeding now before the court had argued in the earlier case that the 2022 map diluted the votes of Black residents, who make up roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld the federal district court’s ruling that the 2022 map likely violated the VRA, and it directed Louisiana to draw a new map by Jan. 15, 2024, or face the prospect that the district court would do so instead.
The Louisiana Legislature adopted a new map in 2024 that contained a second majority-Black district. A group of voters describing themselves as “non-African American” then went to federal court, where they argued that the 2024 map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander – that is, it unconstitutionally sorted the state’s voters based primarily on their race. A three-judge federal district court agreed, but the Supreme Court put that ruling on hold, clearing the way for the state to use the 2024 map in the 2024 elections.
Louisiana had urged the Supreme Court to give states “breathing room” “between the competing demands of” the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, which prohibits the government from treating people differently unless there is an adequate reason. If it focused on race, the state insisted, it did so only to comply with the court orders requiring it to create a second majority-Black district. But then its goal shifted, the state explained, to protecting two high-profile Republican incumbents, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Rep. Julia Letlow, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee.
The ”non-African American” voters countered that the Legislature had “’first made the decision’ to impose the racial quota” of two majority-Black districts, “eliminating one Republican seat, and ‘only then’ had to choose which Republican to sacrifice.” But even if Louisiana had truly sought to comply with the VRA, they added, that is enough to lead to the conclusion that race was the primary factor driving its decision to draw the second majority-Black district.
Over a dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court on June 27 announced that it would hear arguments in the case again during the 2025-26 term. On Friday, the justices instructed the parties to address a specific question: whether Louisiana’s intentional creation of a second majority-Black district violates either the 14th Amendment or the 15th Amendment, which bars both the federal government and states from denying or abridging the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Both amendments were enacted in the wake of the Civil War in an effort to establish equality for formerly enslaved persons.
Louisiana and the Black voters who challenged the 2022 map are to file their briefs by Aug. 27, with the brief from the “non-African American” voters to follow on Sept. 17. The state and the Black voters are to then file their reply briefs by Oct. 3.
Posted in Featured, Merits Cases
