Policy Summary: On April 29, 2026 the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case Louisiana v. Callais.
After the 2020 United States Decennial Census Louisiana was allocated six congressional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Accordingly the Louisiana State Legislature drew its state congressional map that had five districts with white majorities and one with a black majority.
Subsequently, these maps were challenged in court where the plaintiffs alleged the maps violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. After a trial, the Louisiana state congressional map was ruled to be in violation of the VRA and new maps to be drawn and in addition to draw a second black majority district to be more reflective of the demographics of the state after the 2020 census.Louisiana sought a stay of the order from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals but was denied by theappeals court. An appeal was made to the U.S. Supreme Court which stayed the trial court order to drawnew maps. After a ruling in a separate Supreme Court case in 2023, the stay in the Louisiana case was lifted and returned to the Fifth Circuit. The appeals court ordered a new congressional district map be drawn and the Louisiana state legislature drew and approved a new map in 2024 that now included a second black majority district among Louisiana’s six total congressional districts.
These new maps from 2024 were again challenged in court. The case was heard by a three judge panel in the District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. They ruled the map unconstitutional. Anotherappeal to the U.S. Supreme Court followed which ordered the map to be used for the 2024 elections due to the 2024 elections being so close in time. However, the
U.S. Supreme Court allowed for a future appeal on the district court’s ruling that the map is unconstitutional. An appeal to the high court was approved in November 2025.
On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court in a 6 – 3 decision held that the drawing of the 2024 Louisianacongressional district map with the second black majority district unconstitutional. LEARN MORE
Policy Analysis: In the aftermath of the Louisiana v. Callais decision, words and phrases such as abomination, the Voting Rights Act is dead and the Voting Rights has been gutted have been used to describe the effect of the Supreme Court’s decision.
Why?
Many legal scholars have reached back to try to give a history of the Voting Rights of 1965 and its sections and subsequent amendments in order to try and understand why the Callais decision is such adisastrous case. Specifically, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group. In 1980 aSupreme Court case interpreted the section to require proof of intentional racial discrimination.However, this standard was seen as impossibly high to meet since no public election official would admit to implementing a practice or procedure that intentionally discriminated against a group of people. So two years later Congress passed an amendment that changed the standard from “intent” to discriminate to an “effects” test – meaning, a practice, procedure or map could be invalidated if the results show discrimination based on race. This is the legal framework of Section 2 that had been in place since 1982.
However, under the Roberts Court, the court began to chip away at the protections the VRA provided to minority voting groups. The 2013 Shelby decision required a new formula to determine which statesrequired pre – clearance prior to implementing a voting procedure; a new formula seemed unlikely topass in Congress which effectively rendered parts of the VRA unenforceable.
But for the Callais decision, the Court called the redrawn map with the second black majority district unconstitutional. While that was a likely outcome, what makes the decision by Justice Samuel Alito worse is his reasoning and how states that want to favor Republican candidates can do about it. While those districts drawn to give a minority community a majority in a selected district, e.g., black majority districts like in Louisiana, Justice Alito calls these districts unconstitutional because it is based on race. Justice Alito does not seem to understand that these minority – majority districts came about in the first place because minority communities had historically been prohibited from voting in significant numbers in the first place because of their race! But the key point from the opinion is that Justice Alito actually writes that to get around being accused of suppressing voters based on race, the easiest thing to do nowis simply draw a district that weakens minority voting power and simply say the district is being drawn based for partisan reasons and not for race since partisan gerrymanders are constitutionally permissible. What Justice Alito did is tell state election officials to say publicly one thing – that districts are drawn togive a political party an advantage. Even if privately their reason to draw it that way is to suppress the voting power of minority groups. Justice Alito basically just allowed racist efforts at re – districting as long as election officials don’t say it out loud.
In one fell swoop, the majority opinion in the Callais case weakened the protection the VRA provides to minority communities by changing the legal standard to be met to prove a violation and then toldelection officials how to suppress the voting power of racial groups by calling their actions drawing districts and state maps something else. Simply a terrible Supreme Court decision. LEARN MORE
Take Action
- Common Cause – non – profit group’s take on the Callais decision and what to do moving forward.
- Fair Elections Center – statement from non – profit group on Callais decision and resources to fight back and encourage fair elections.