Critics fear 'head-spinning reversal' could burn down historic Supreme Court decision

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear new arguments Wednesday over Louisiana’s congressional maps. State Republican leaders now want to get rid of a majority-Black district they created, and the Supreme Court’s ruling could have national implications.

Attorney General Liz Murrill questions key tenets of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark federal law that has been amended multiple times over the decades to prohibit racial discrimination in elections. Watching closely are Republicans in other states who have pushed to redraw their congressional districts to improve their odds of holding onto U.S. House seats – and their majority status – in next year’s midterm elections.

In Louisiana v. Callais, justices could set a standard for the degree to which race can be considered when drawing election maps.

A group of non-Black Louisiana voters filed the lawsuit after the state legislature, at the direction of Murrill and Gov. Jeff Landry, approved a U.S. House map in January 2024 with two out of six districts being majority Black. A previous map, which a federal district judge rejected, had just one majority-Black seat in a state where Black residents account for one-third of the population.

The governor and attorney general preferred lawmakers maintain control in drawing new congressional district boundaries after the judge invalidated a previous version and threatened to have her court draw the lines instead.

The Supreme Court was originally expected to rule on the Callais case earlier this year. But in a rare move, justices punted their decision to their next term. They also posed new questions for parties to answer: Did the legislature’s creation of a second majority-Black district violate the 14th or 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution?

The 14th Amendment, in part, covers representation in Congress, and the 15th Amendment prevents citizens from being denied the right to vote based on their race.

Since then, Murrill has gone from supporting the map with two majority-Black districts to questioning the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting laws or procedures that purposefully discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group.

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court, Murrill argued Section 2, as it has been applied to Louisiana, is unconstitutional.

“Race-based redistricting under Section 2 is principally unconstitutional because it inherently rests on a racial stereotype: that all voters of a particular race must — by virtue of their membership in their racial class — think alike, share the same interests, and prefer the same political candidates,” she wrote.

To bring a successful case under Section 2, plaintiffs must prove the racial minority in question is politically cohesive.

The Trump administration has filed its own brief echoing Murrill’s arguments.

Like Murrill, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer argues the standard for determining whether a district complies with the Voting Rights Act is flawed and should be altered. The so-called Gingles test, which arose from a 1986 Supreme Court ruling, sets the standards for determining whether election districts meet federal standards.

The Trump administration also argues that plaintiffs seeking judicial relief from a violation of Section 2 should be required to take state’s political motivations into consideration when offering alternative districts. For example, this could include drawing a district to not just keep an incumbent in their district but to ensure the incumbent’s victory.

Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive organization that follows redistricting issues throughout the country, said requiring plaintiffs to meet a state’s political goals is among the Trump administration’s boldest proposed modifications to the Section 2 framework.

“Effectively, this is asking SCOTUS to gut the [Voting Rights Act] without saying you are gutting the [Voting Rights Act],” Li said.

In addition to the Trump administration, 16 Republican state attorneys general have signed onto briefs in support of Murrill’s arguments in the Callais case. In the filings, Republicans argue in favor of a “colorblind” approach, in which states would not consider race in the redistricting process at all.

Attorneys with the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund representing Black voters, say the “colorblind” era before approval of the Voting Rights Act was marked by racial discrimination.

“It was an era ‘blind’ to race only in the sense that obvious, widespread discrimination went unaddressed by Congress and courts,” the attorneys wrote in a rebuttal to the Murrill and Sauer briefs.

Press Robinson, the lead Black voter who sued Louisiana over its original, single-Black district map, believes the state should still be subject to its Section 2 requirements. Robinson said he hasn’t observed sufficient progress in the 60 years he’s been involved in politics in the state.

“It’s fairly easy to be arguing that things have changed to the point that there’s no need for special dispensation of Black voters,” Robinson said earlier this month in a news media briefing. “Has Louisiana really changed? I don’t see it. I don’t know what they’re talking about when they say that it has.”

“Louisiana has only been a full democracy since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 when federal law finally guaranteed Black communities the right to participate equally in our political process,” ACLU of Louisiana executive director Alanah Odoms said at the same news conference.

Attorneys for Black voters in the case called Republicans’ stance a “burn-it-all-down approach” and argued Louisiana would prefer no congressional or judicial oversight for its voting processes.

“Let there be no mistake: That was the situation that prevailed in Louisiana and nationwide for the 100 years before the [Voting Rights Act],” the ACLU and NAACP attorneys wrote. “It was a time when Black voters and other voters of color were systematically excluded from the political process.”

Potential ‘head-spinning reversal’

Until the Voting Rights Act was enacted, many promises of Reconstruction era amendments to the Constitution were largely unfulfilled as Black voters were suppressed under racially oppressive Jim Crow laws.

The Voting Rights Act has been amended five times to strengthen its provisions, though voting rights advocates said federal court rulings over the past decade have chipped away at the law. The most notable crack occurred in 2013 when the Supreme Court ruled Section 5 of the act was unconstitutional. The provision required Louisiana and other listed states and local governments to get federal government pre-approval for any redistricting plan or voting law.

The redistricting cycle based on the 2020 census is the first in which Louisiana was not subject to this preclearance.

Murrill’s defection ended state Republican leaders’ strange bedfellowship with Black voters who challenged the 2022 version of the congressional district map. Both supported the 2024 map, but their alliance came to an end in September when Republicans and groups supporting Black voters filed opposing briefs, teeing up the arguments justices will make Wednesday.

If the justices side with Louisiana and the Trump administration, it would reverse a precedent the court set just two years ago in in Allen v. Milligan, the Alabama case that required lawmakers there to add a second majority-Black congressional district.

“If the Court decides to now undo that precedent, it would be a head-spinning reversal of itself,” John Bisognano, president of the National Redistricting Foundation, a voting rights organization, said in a statement.

Special session questions

There is no set date for when justices will rule on Callais, but it is likely to be next year before the end of June.

In anticipation of the ruling, the Louisiana Legislature is considering a special session in the coming weeks to push back the qualification deadline for next year’s congressional elections. Doing so would give lawmakers enough time next year to adopt a new redistricting plan.

In August, Gov. Landry directed lawmakers to set aside dates for another redistricting special session, but legislative leaders expressed reluctance to do so before justices made a decision in the Callais case. Depending on the court’s ruling, it’s possible Louisiana’s new U.S. House map could have two, one or even no majority Black districts.

Fair Fight Action, a progressive voting rights organization, predicts that if the Supreme Court sides with conservatives and hollows out Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, states could redraw up to 19 majority Black districts to make them competitive or safe seats for Republicans.