He asked Google Gemini to draft an opinion for the redistricting case. Once again, the AI assistant predicted a 6-3 ruling, the conservatives sticking together.
The 20-page fake draft opinion anticipates the Court will affirm a district court’s ruling that a Louisiana congressional map redrawn in 2024 to create a second Black-majority district is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The map was redrawn because a federal court determined in 2022 that a new congressional map based on the 2020 census was likely in violation of Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination against voters.
The 2020 map only had one of six Louisiana districts representing a majority of Black voters, despite one-third of the state’s population being Black.
In other words, the plaintiff in Louisiana v. Callais claims that drawing maps to combat racism and ensure Black representation is itself a racist act.
The actual Supreme Court opinion might not come for months, but based on oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, experts predict further weakening of the Voting Rights Act.
“I'm not sure they'll say the whole thing's unconstitutional, but they will render it a less powerful force,” Chandler said.
“If I were the NAACP, I would not be happy with the way that argument went.”
‘Fist on the scale’
Chief Justice John Roberts “launched his legal career in attacking Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act Congress,” said Lisa Graves, chief counsel for nominations with the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2002 to 2005, who also predicted a weakening of the landmark civil rights law.
Graves said it was “extraordinary to see … the Roberts Court putting its fist on the scale of justice in this way and also taking up this assault on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as Donald Trump, for months now, has been demanding that state legislatures rig their maps to protect him from having a Democratic majority in Congress that could begin to hold him accountable for his transgressions of the Constitution.”
Lisa Graves (provided photo)
In her new book, “Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights,” Graves details how Roberts spent “hundreds of hours trying to block” Section 2 while working for the Reagan administration.
Graves writes that Roberts was intensely questioned about his writings on the Voting Rights Act during his 2005 confirmation hearing. The late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) said he was “deeply troubled” by Roberts’ “mean-spirited view” of Section 2.
Now, through Louisiana v. Callais, Roberts and his court are finally “poised to constrict the ability of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to limit disparate racial impact,” Graves writes.
She told Raw Story: “It does feel like the zeitgeist has caught up because more and more people are going ‘Whoa,’ so I guess it is an ‘I told you so,’ regretfully.”
‘Supremely arrogant’
Louisiana v. Callais stands to be highly influential, as states engage in off-cycle redistricting efforts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Typically, redistricting happens once a decade.
Trump told Texas Republicans to redraw congressional maps this summer, in an attempt to give Republicans five more House seats and solidify control. He’s since encouraged other red states such as Missouri, North Carolina and Indiana to gerrymander to boost the GOP.
If the Supreme Court does limit Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, it will most likely “give the green light to yet further partisan gerrymandering, which in many cases will hurt minorities,” Chandler said.
Seth Chandler (Photo courtesy of the University of Houston Law Center)
With Roberts leading the way, Graves said the court was “determined to mow down those limitations on Donald Trump” as seen in Trump v. United States, the 2024 case that granted him "unprecedented immunity from criminal prosecution.”
“I think this court is fully a MAGA court now,” Graves said.
“This Roberts court is supremely arrogant in its determination to roll back the clock on not just recent 21st-century precedents, but to roll back the clock to before the New Deal, to the Robber Baron era.”
Lindsey Cormack, associate professor of political science at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, said partisanship was “undeniable” in the judicial branch, despite a traditional expectation of impartiality.
“It's sort of the most political branch in the sense that the only way you can be on the courts is if you're appointed by an elected official, and the only way you're confirmed is if the rest of the elected officials at the federal level say, ‘Yeah, you can play here,” Cormack said.
“It's kind of a nice fiction that we tell ourselves to be like they're not partisan, but we do know that judges have political opinions. Someone put them in office, and someone voted for them, and someone voted against them.”
‘Opportunity to change’
Passed under Lyndon B. Johnson in the civil rights era, the Voting Rights Act is “one of the most important pieces of legislation that was ever written and enacted,” Graves said.
Weakening the law “would be a disaster for America,” she added.
“It would also pave the way for white-dominated, Republican-controlled legislatures in the South to further dilute Black votes in America in ways that would aid Trump's quest to secure an illegitimate majority in the House.”
Cormack said the court was considering the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais in “a very different way than how we've ever seen it in the past.”
She argued that the ruling could give an opportunity to “see things differently.”
“We know that Louisiana has a history of problematic discrimination — and that's not really controversial to say in the sense that they had poll taxes and literacy tests and white primaries and grandfather clauses until the very last time that they could, which was in 1965 — but we can't make it impossible for a state to outrun this sort of history,” Cormack said.
“We have to give states the opportunity to change … it's not fair to always hold the Confederate South to ‘They're always going to be problematic.’”
Lindsey Cormack (provided photo)
But Cormack acknowledged a ruling affirming the district court’s decision in the case “probably means that it's going to be very hard to bring a racially motivated claim” in the future.
Congress could pass new legislation reaffirming racial discrimination protections in the Voting Rights Act, Cormack said, but that’s unlikely given GOP control.
“It seems like the tolerance for … race-based anything is going by the wayside, at least by the majority party that controls the House and Senate right now, so it'll be really hard to see anything that happens in the next year to sort of change this.
“You get a different Congress, you maybe get a different outcome, but we're a ways off from that.”
