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The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case on October 15 Louisiana v. Calle And Robinson vs. Kalisa pair of consolidated cases that threaten what little remains of the federal government's ability to protect voters from racial gerrymandering under the Voting Rights Act.
The VRA is a 1965 federal law that finally implemented Fifteenth Amendment guarantee that the government will not deny or restrict the right to vote on the basis of race. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law after years protecting the rights of civil rights activists and decades of brutal repression of those rights by white supremacists. Without exaggeration, the VRA allowed the United States to credibly claim for the first time that it was a multiracial democracy.
Opponents of multiracial democracy led by Main Justice John Robertssince then they have been fighting against the VRA, misinterpretation basic protections provided for in the law and make them impossible ensure compliance. Calish is the conservative legal movement's last resort to persuade the Court to invalidate the Civil Rights Movement's greatest triumph nationwide.
In 2022, Louisiana Republican lawmakers passed a map in Congress that would “package” Black Louisiana residents into one district and “split” them into five others. This means that of the six parishes, only one has a majority black majority, even though one in three Louisiana residents is black.
Under the Voting Rights Act, voters of color must have an equal opportunity to elect the candidates of their choice. But the Louisiana vote racially polarizedThis means that the white majority persistently votes as a bloc to defeat candidates favored by black voters: to date, the state has never had a black senator or elected a black governor since Reconstruction, and no congressional district in Louisiana except the only one with a black majority has elected a black representative. Thus, the only way black Louisianans could have the equal opportunity that the Voting Rights Act requires is for Louisiana to create a second district in which black Louisianans are in the majority.
Black voters in Louisiana sued, and federal courts found that the map did violate Section 2 of the VRA and ordered legislators to redraw the map and add a second majority-black district. But then a group of self-described “non-Black voters” sued to challenge What map, arguing that a map drawn to eliminate illegal racial gerrymandering is myself illegal racial schemer. If the Supreme Court agrees that there is no legal distinction between causing and treating racially motivated harm, Calish will deprive real victims of discrimination of the legal tools to do something about it.
The court heard oral arguments in Calish For first time in March 2025 and looked at two main questions: First, whether Louisiana legislators allowed racial considerations to “prevail” when they drew the second map, and if so, whether they had good reasons for doing so. Under existing law, these questions are easy to answer: Even if Louisiana lawmakers drew a second map based on race, Supreme Court precedent confirms that “the courts told us to fix our illegal racist card” is a damn good reason to do so.
But the court's Republican judges don't like the existing law. And now they are reviewing the cases to be able to change the situation. Back in June, the Supreme Court unexpectedly ended its term without making a decision. Calishand instead issued an inexplicable order to return the cases to the calendar for retrial.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissenterbut only because he didn't want to wait any longer to say that the VRA doesn't “justify” the practice of “racially redistricting” under circumstances that are “entirely separate” from “specific, identified instances of past discrimination.” Essentially, according to Thomas, any attempt to repair racial harm is unacceptable unless it addresses a specific instance of 1960s-style racism.
As usual, Thomas was ahead of his colleagues: on August 1, the trial directed That Calish The parties must file additional briefing on the issue of whether intentionally creating a second majority-black district—as Louisiana legislators did here in response to the court's ruling—violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments. Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, a Republican, recognized the new structure as a gift and filed a lawsuit brief On August 27, he completely refused to defend the second card. Instead, she argued that the Voting Rights Act imposes an unconstitutional mandate based on race and that the Constitution is “colorblind,” which apparently means “an unwillingness to acknowledge the harms done to people of color.”
If the court agrees, the result will deepen the disenfranchisement of black communities across the country. Without controls on racial gerrymandering, a system in which voters ostensibly choose their elected officials will become a system in which elected officials are freer than ever to choose their constituents, leaving black voters with even fewer legitimate opportunities to ensure fair representation.
The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were specifically designed to give black people equal rights as citizens in a democratic society. Instead, the Court is preparing to use those very amendments to take away those rights.
