Supreme Court Expands Louisiana Redistricting Case to Challenge Section 2 of Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of expanding the legal questions in Louisiana v. Callais (Nos. 24-109, 24-110), ordering supplemental briefs on whether creating majority-minority districts to remedy Voting Rights Act violations violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments. The Court’s order signals potential willingness to strike down or severely limit Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which since 1982 has prohibited voting practices that result in racial discrimination, even without proof of intentional bias.

Section 2 has been the primary federal tool for challenging vote dilution—when redistricting plans or electoral systems diminish minority voters’ ability to elect candidates of their choice. The provision allows courts to order race-conscious remedies, including creation of majority-minority districts, when they find violations under a ’totality of circumstances’ test. The Trump administration’s Justice Department filed briefs arguing that Section 2 is unconstitutional as applied to redistricting, claiming states’ remedies constitute ’electoral race-based affirmative action’ and that the VRA should only prohibit intentional discrimination, not discriminatory results.

Civil rights organizations warned that gutting Section 2 would eliminate one of the few remaining tools for challenging discriminatory redistricting, potentially allowing states to draw maps that dilute minority voting power without federal remedy. Louisiana itself reversed position after the Court’s order, filing an August 27 brief arguing that all ‘race-based redistricting is unconstitutional’—even redistricting ordered by courts to remedy proven discrimination. The case threatens to complete the Court’s decade-long assault on the Voting Rights Act following Shelby County (2013) and Brnovich (2021), with reargument scheduled for October 2025.