Redrawing Democracy: The Supreme Court’s Next Test on Civil Rights

Image sourced from the National Archives (NARA)

Edited by Emilia Grabowski, Jordan Collinson, Owen Andrews, and Sarah Ahmad

Sixty years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the question of how race-conscious the law should be sits before a historically unpopular Supreme Court with a bold conservative majority willing to upend landmark legal precedents. 56% of Americans say SCOTUS is only doing a fair or poor job of deliberating over cases — this comes as the court hears oral arguments that could erase the line between racial equality and state-sanctioned racial discrimination in electoral redistricting. 

RACE, REDISTRICTING, AND RULINGS 

In 2022, the Louisiana legislature passed a Senate bill to increase its Black congressional districts from one to two out of the state's six districts. Proponents of the law say that it brings congressional districts in alignment with Louisiana’s 30% Black residents and therefore ensures equal representation for elections. This is a protection outlined in Section Two of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, opponents say that the second district constitutes racial gerrymandering and violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause under the 14th Amendment. 

Gerrymandering is the redrawing of voting districts’ boundaries to provide a political party an advantage in elections: by concentrating or spreading apart voters that favor a particular party, candidates can win elections without receiving the most votes from their constituency. The Supreme Court ruled that gerrymandering falls outside their authority to rule on, but Louisiana v. Callias is different. It is not just about redistricting but using the law to potentially reduce the voting power of racial minorities — this is called voter dilution and is addressed in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act prohibits racial discrimination in voting procedures and justifies the creation of a majority-minority district to counter voter dilution. Similarly, the Supreme Court’s decision on Thornburg v. Gingles created a three-tier framework for majority-minority districts that evaluates if a voting practice was discriminating against protected groups. One, the minority group must be sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district. Second, the group must be politically cohesive. Third, the majority must vote sufficiently as a bloc to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate. In a separate ruling, SCOTUS decided that states must balance majority-minority districts under the Equal Protection Clause to ensure that race is not a primary factor in redistricting. 

Critics against Louisiana's second majority-Black district argue that race, even to remedy past discrimination, still violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Lower courts even struck down Louisiana’s new map, arguing in favor of the critique that race was a major factor in the redistricting process. However, the Supreme Court allowed the map to be used for the 2024 elections but agreed to revisit the scope of the Voting Rights Act. 

The defense against Louisiana’s map is a distortion of the equal protection clause and the implications of the 14th and 15th amendments. This amendment was enacted in the wake of Reconstruction to force the state governments to protect against the continued discrimination against formerly enslaved laborers. As a result, the Supreme Court has long held that race-conscious remedies to historically discriminatory practices are permissible when narrowly tailored to address proven discrimination. The original purpose of the amendments does not prohibit all race-conscious policies — it prohibits racial discrimination, which can only have systematic effects when implemented by the majority against minority communities. Ultimately, there is a critical difference between using race to exclude and using race to include.  

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear this case comes after its ruling in the 2023 decision Allen v. Milligan, which held a similar case on creating an added Black-majority congressional district in Alabama, one that the justices ruled 5-4. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts applied the criteria for deciding claims of voter dilution and found the state in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965’s Section Two. For SCOTUS to vote against the map will significantly restrain Section Two of the act and affirm that protecting Black voters by ensuring equal representation is unconstitutional, a complete erosion of the equal protection clause’s basis. While the act may not be fully nullified, the Court’s decision to vote against the map foreshadows the act’s expiration date. 

SCOTUS’S LIKELY DECISION 

The Supreme Court is in a favorable position to gut Section Two of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through their ruling on Louisiana v. Callais. An observer of American politics will see the conservative majority increasingly favoring a “colorblind” interpretation of the law as they have been progressively eroding the VRA and other civil rights-informed laws. For example, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Court invalidated a provision of the Voting Rights Act that required certain states with pronounced histories of systematic discrimination, like Virginia, to obtain federal approval before changing voting laws. The ruling weakened federal oversight on voting laws, a key safeguard against states creating potentially discriminatory voting procedures. Three of the justices from that case are due to rule in Louisiana v. Callias: Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, and Justice Clarence Thomas. Likewise, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard dismantled decades-long precedents on race in collegiate admissions policies.  

Louisiana v. Callais is not just a legal dispute over district lines; it is a case that asks whether the federal government still has the authority — and the will — to ensure equal representation for historically discriminated communities. The plaintiffs in Callais argue that the creation of a second majority-Black district unfairly advantages Black voters. But this claim warps the original purpose and application of civil rights-era legislation. The new map does not disenfranchise non-Black voters but ensures that Black voters — who have historically been suppressed through practices like gerrymandering — have a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. 

The justices must now decide whether the intentional creation of a second majority-Black district is a valid remedy for racial discrimination or an unconstitutional racial classification.  

CIVIL RIGHTS PROTECTIONS IN THE 21ST CENTURY 

Louisiana v. Callais will be another litmus test for civil rights, and this cohort of justices could set a precedent that could either maintain the blueprint of equal protection or redraw its lines beyond recognition. If they choose to curtail the Voting Rights Act, they will be drawing a new blueprint for equal protection — one that may leave millions of Americans without a meaningful voice in the political process. Proponents of the court may argue the institution is supposed to be counter-majority and immune from political influence. While historically sound, the average voter would be remiss to not see the overlap between the SCOTUS ruling and the growing political agenda adamant on dismantling landmark protections against select communities. 

Louisiana v. Callais raises important questions about the scope of federal authority in enforcing effective and necessary anti-discrimination practices in the 21st century. It brings up the question of whether it still holds the promise of a democracy that includes everyone, regardless of race, and it is about whether the Supreme Court will honor that promise — or turn away from it.