Supreme Court Strikes Down Louisiana Map and Narrows Use of Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down Louisiana’s current congressional map in a 6-3 ruling that also sharply narrowed how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can be used in redistricting fights nationwide.

The decision in Louisiana v. Callais means Louisiana’s 2024 map cannot be used in future elections. But the ruling reaches well beyond one state. By tightening the legal standards for proving vote-dilution claims and for defending race-conscious district lines, the court reset the rules for a major category of voting-rights litigation across the country.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The court affirmed a ruling by a three-judge federal district court that had found Louisiana’s 2024 congressional map, known as SB8, to be an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The majority said the state had relied on race too heavily when it drew a second majority-Black district and could not justify that choice by pointing to federal voting-rights law.

Alito wrote that “the Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race.” The majority said the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, so the state lacked a sufficient reason for using race the way it did.

That conclusion is especially consequential because SB8 was enacted in response to earlier litigation over Louisiana’s 2022 congressional map. Black residents make up roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population, but that map contained just one majority-Black district out of six.

A federal judge had concluded that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the federal law that bars voting practices leaving minority voters with less opportunity than others to participate in the political process and elect candidates of their choice. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals then directed the state to draw a new map or face one being imposed.

Lawmakers responded in January 2024 by adopting SB8, which created a second majority-Black district, District 6. Courts described that district as stretching roughly 250 miles from Shreveport to Baton Rouge. The map was used in the 2024 election, when Cleo Fields won the new seat.

Then a separate group of voters who described themselves as “non-African American” challenged SB8, arguing that the map sorted voters by race in violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

What makes Wednesday’s decision especially important is not simply that the justices invalidated SB8. The court also revised the legal framework that has governed Section 2 redistricting cases for decades, tightening the path for plaintiffs who argue a map unlawfully dilutes minority voting strength.

Under the new approach, plaintiffs seeking to show that Section 2 required an additional majority-minority district must now present an illustrative map that does not itself use race as a districting criterion and that also satisfies the state’s legitimate districting objectives, including political goals. In practical terms, that gives states more room to argue that a proposed alternative map is legally insufficient.

The court also said plaintiffs’ analysis of racially polarized voting must control for partisan affiliation when trying to show that minority voters vote cohesively and that other voters usually defeat their preferred candidates. And the majority said Section 2 liability should apply “only when the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.”

Taken together, those changes narrow, but do not eliminate, Section 2 as a tool for challenging district maps. The ruling updates and tightens the framework courts have long used in these cases, marking a significant shift from the court’s 2023 decision in Allen v. Milligan, which had been widely read as preserving Section 2 as a meaningful check on discriminatory redistricting.

Kagan said the majority had done far more than reject one Louisiana map. “The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. … Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter,” she wrote. In a further warning about the court’s new standard, she said it “will effectively insulate any practice ... said by a State to have any race-neutral justification.”

The immediate result is that the district court’s ruling against SB8 remains in place, and Louisiana cannot keep using the map going forward. The broader result is that lower courts around the country will now have to apply the Supreme Court’s tougher new standards in future redistricting cases, raising the bar for plaintiffs seeking to use the Voting Rights Act to challenge electoral maps.