During oral arguments Wednesday, the Supreme Court expressed sympathy for significantly limiting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a move that could significantly boost Republican hopes of winning the U.S. House in future elections and significantly reduce the number of black and Latino officeholders in the country.
The justices heard arguments in Louisiana v. Calle, a case centered around Louisiana's congressional map that created two majority-black districts. The Trump administration and the state of Louisiana have argued that using race to draw congressional districts as a protection against discrimination is itself a violation of the Constitution. If a majority of the court agrees, it would render toothless a 60-year-old law that paved the way for increased minority representation in the United States since the civil rights era. It would essentially destroy the last enforcement mechanism of the Voting Rights Act and open the door for Republicans to eliminate scores of majority- and minority-held congressional seats in the states they control.
A decision in Louisiana's favor could potentially solidify Republican control of the House of Representatives for years to come and upend electoral maps from Congress to city council lines and school districts. During oral arguments, NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney Janay Nelson warned that if the court strikes down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the part of the law left in place after a previous Supreme Court ruling weakened another part of the law, “the results would be pretty disastrous” for minority representation.
Why did we write this
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that asked whether using race as a factor in congressional maps violates the Constitution. If the justices decide that it does, the decision could open the door for Republican politicians to redraw the maps and eliminate a number of black and Latino districts.
Hashim Mooppan of the Justice Department, defending the plaintiffs, suggested that “there is no reason to suggest that since Louisiana has a large number of Democrats who do not have a district, this is a racial reason rather than a partisan reason.”
Conservatives have a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, and after oral arguments, many scholars predict it will severely limit the law's application.
“I think it's very unlikely that the Voting Rights Act will escape this court unscathed. I think they'll likely strike down part of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” says Harvard Kennedy School professor Maya Sen, who studies law and politics.
Should the Voting Rights Act continue?
In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down another key component of the Voting Rights Act. In that ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a majority opinion that effectively ended the federal government's previous ability to block maps it deemed to be racially gerrymandered in states with a history of discrimination. Judge Roberts has long been a skeptic of the law—as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, he fought unsuccessfully against expansion Voting Rights Act. As a result, Section 2 remained the primary enforcement mechanism for the law.
Ed Blum, the conservative activist lawyer who led the prosecution in the case that led to the 2013 decision, predicts the court will continue to tighten the law.
“It is unlikely that the court will rule that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional,” he tells the Monitor. “However, it appears that section 2 will be narrowed so that racially motivated gerrymandering for purportedly corrective purposes will become unlawful.”
This court has surprised voting rights observers before. Two years ago, the court's conservative majority ruled 5-4 to uphold an injunction against an Alabama map that lower courts found discriminated against black voters under Section 2, with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joining the court's three liberals in the majority.
But on Wednesday, Judge Kavanaugh sounded much more favorable to the arguments presented by the Trump administration and Louisiana, raising the question of whether the VRA application should continue indefinitely. Chief Justice Roberts remained fairly quiet during oral arguments. If just one of these two justices sides with their fellow conservatives, what remains of the Voting Rights Act could be dramatically weakened.
Josh Blackman, a conservative legal scholar and law professor at South Texas College of Law, said there are “almost certainly six votes” to rule in favor of Louisiana in the case.
“Judge Kavanaugh came to the argument extremely well prepared and seemed to have outlined all the contours of his opinion. He seemed to be reading from notes and formulating various standards that could be applied,” he says. “I think he’s generally happy with how the government is handling things.”
Political consequences
The political consequences of such a decision would be profound, likely allowing red-state Republicans to eliminate a number of Democratic-controlled black and Latino districts in the South and virtually secure their control of the House of Representatives.
Republicans, at the direction of President Donald Trump, are already pursuing mid-decade redistricting in states such as Texas, Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina, Kansas and possibly Indiana to eliminate Democratic-held seats and strengthen their majority in the House. (California Democrats are responding by trying to redraw the map of their state.) But those efforts pale in comparison to what the GOP could do without the restrictions of the Voting Rights Act.
Republicans could eliminate up to 19 minority-majority Democratic congressional seats and all but guarantee a House majority in future elections, according to report recent report Democratic voting rights groups Black Voters Matter and Fair Fight Action. A New York Times analysis It estimates that if the Supreme Court gives Republicans a free hand to eliminate these seats, Democrats would need to win the popular vote in the national House of Representatives by about five percentage points in the next election to regain control of the chamber, compared with just 1.4 points assuming GOP states complete their current gerrymandering.
In an unusual move, the Supreme Court heard the case during its final term — and sent it back for another round of oral arguments, asking lawyers on both sides to focus specifically on whether the Voting Rights Act violates the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The 14th Amendment provides equal protection under the law, and the 15th Amendment prohibits governments from denying or abridging the right of citizens to vote “because of race, color, or previous condition of slavery.” Voting rights advocates saw the court's request itself as ominous, posing a broader challenge to the law.
David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, says this was “a very troubling question that the Supreme Court asked.”
Conservatives argued that Louisiana's congressional map was drawn with the intention of maximizing Republican representation rather than minimizing the black vote, and that considering race in gerrymandering violated the 14th and 15th Amendments. The case, Louisiana v. Calle, arose after Louisiana redrawn its congressional map in 2022 to include a majority-Black district in one of the state's six districts. About a third of the state's population is black. A federal judge ruled that the map likely violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered the state to draw new maps. In 2024, the state created a second majority-black district. A group of “non-African American” plaintiffs challenged the latter theory, and a federal district court upheld their position, leading to a direct appeal to the Supreme Court.
“Redistricting along racial lines is fundamentally contrary to our Constitution. It requires targeting enough members of the majority race to substantially reduce their voting power, and it requires targeting enough members of the minority race to sufficiently increase their voting power,” Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga said during the hearing.
The Trump administration's Justice Department has taken a slightly different position: Section 2 should not be repealed, but simply limited.
Ms. Nelson argued in her rebuttal that restricting the Voting Rights Act would lead to a resurgence of racially discriminatory gerrymandering.
The court will have to rule quickly on the case if it has implications for the 2026 midterm elections, and it is unclear how quickly a decision could be reached. Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry asked the court to rule this winter to be able to prepare a new map before the state's April primary, a request that attorneys repeated during oral arguments Wednesday.
The Supreme Court usually makes its major decisions in June or July. That won't leave most states enough time to redraw their maps in time for their state's primary election filing deadlines. But it's unclear whether that will happen this time, or whether the justices could issue a quicker ruling in time to upend the 2026 midterm elections and help President Trump's party maintain unified control of Washington.
Staff writer Victoria Hoffmann contributed reporting to this story.
