Supreme Court limits racial challenges under Voting Rights Act, hands GOP states new mapmaking power
by Stephen Dinan · The Washington TimesThe Supreme Court issued a seismic ruling Wednesday, preserving but tightening the use of the Voting Rights Act, saying the iconic law can’t be used to force states to add more minority districts to their maps unless there is clear evidence of racial discrimination.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the 6-3 majority, warned that the iconic 1965 law had come to be used “cynically” to force states to add more Democrat-friendly minority seats, under the guise of protecting minority voters.
That, he said, can no longer stand.
“The Constitution imposes some important restrictions on the states’ exercise of this power, but they are otherwise free to draw districts as they please,” Justice Alito wrote in a decision joined by the high court’s five other Republican appointees.
The ruling doesn’t strip states of the ability to use race in their decision-making. But it will take away a legal tool Democrats have used to force Republican-led states in the South to carve out more minority-heavy — and pro-Democrat — seats than they would otherwise have done.
The ruling strikes down Louisiana’s current congressional map, which includes two majority-Black districts.
The state had been forced to draw that map at the orders of a federal judge, who ruled that the previous map, with just one Black district, wasn’t favorable enough to the state’s Black voters. Justice Alito said that focus on Black voters was, itself, “an unconstitutional gerrymander.”
More broadly, the new decision provides legal backing for other states, such as Texas, where lawmakers dismantled a number of Democrat-friendly, minority-heavy seats last year and replaced them with more Republican-leaning congressional districts.
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That ignited a redistricting war that is still playing out.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissent for the court’s three Democratic appointees, saying the ruling overturned court precedent and the intent of Congress in writing and updating the Voting Rights Act.
She said the decision is the latest in a string of rulings that has achieved a “now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”
“I dissent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity. I dissent,” she wrote.
She dispensed with the usual protocol, where justices note they “respectfully” dissent.
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The 1965 law was enacted to counter active discrimination against minority voters, particularly Black voters. It gave the federal government extensive powers to intrude on state elections, down to the location of polling places, and it gave voters themselves legal avenues to challenge election procedures.
It was enacted at a time when party and race weren’t so closely tied. In the South, for example, the bigger divide was between White and Black than between Democrat and Republican.
Justice Alito said that has changed.
“And if, as a result of this progress, it is hard to find pertinent evidence relating to intentional present-day voting discrimination, that is cause for celebration,” he wrote.
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The court’s two Black members split on the ruling. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee, sided with Justice Kagan, while Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush pick, was part of the majority.
He wrote his own opinion, saying he would have gone even further in blocking racial challenges to voting district lines.
“This Court should never have interpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effectively give racial groups ’an entitlement to roughly proportional representation,’” Justice Thomas wrote.
After the 2020 Census gave Louisiana six seats in the U.S. House, the Legislature drew a map intended to give Republicans five of the state’s six seats, with the sixth, where a majority of voters were Black, electing a Democrat.
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Black voters challenged that map, arguing that, as 33% of the state’s population, they should have two districts where they were a majority.
Under court prodding, the state Legislature delivered the new map ahead of the 2024 election, creating two Black-heavy districts — including one that stretched 250 miles across the state in order to collect enough Black voters.
Democrats won both of the seats, reducing Republicans to a 4-2 margin in the state’s delegation.
Non-Black voters challenged the new map, saying it forced race into what was essentially a political exercise.
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The case is Louisiana v. Callais. Phillip Callais was the lead challenger, arguing that the map that carved out two Black districts was discriminatory.
The Supreme Court first held oral arguments during its 2024-2025 term but held the case over to this term and ordered new arguments focused specifically on the tension between the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution.
Justice Alito said the Constitution has allowed only a few exceptions to the general bar on racial discrimination. That includes where human safety is in play — such as the possibility of a race riot in a prison — or where the discrimination is “remediating” a specific past instance of discrimination.
He said the Voting Rights Act fits under that second test, but only where the discrimination can be readily proved.
Former President Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, attacked the justices for the ruling, saying the court was “intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach.”
He urged Democrats to show their displeasure by voting.
“The good news is that such setbacks can be overcome. But that will only happen if citizens across the country who cherish our democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers,” Mr. Obama said in a statement.
Other Democrats said the ruling should reignite calls to upend the Supreme Court itself.
“Our nation’s highest court has been compromised,” said Rep. Yvette Clarke, New York Democrat and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, which stands to see its numbers diminished in the aftermath of the decision.
Wednesday’s ruling comes nearly 13 years after the court punctured another part of the Voting Rights Act that had given the Justice Department a veto over election changes in states and localities deemed too racist to manage their own affairs.
In that 2013 ruling, the Shelby County case, the court said the criteria Congress used to determine which jurisdictions were still too racist to manage their own affairs were out of date. Congress has been unable to rewrite the criteria since then.
Justice Kagan lamented the withering of the storied law.
“It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers,” she wrote. “It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed — not the members of this court.”
But Justice Alito said the law had reduced voters to racial stereotypes.
“If race and politics are not disentangled and a Section 2 claim is cynically used as a tool for advancing a partisan end, the VRA’s noble goal will be perverted,” he wrote.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.