Louisiana v. Callais

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Following the 2020 United States census, Louisiana was assigned six seats in the United States House of Representatives. The census found that about one-third of the people in the state were Black. The Louisiana State Legislature, where the Republican Party held a majority in both chambers, approved new maps that were largely unchanged from the previous decade, giving the state five districts with white majorities and one with a black majority.^[1]

Black voters challenged the new maps in court, alleging it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which prohibits racial discrimination in elections. In the ensuing case, Ardoin v. Robinson, U.S. District judge Shelly Dick ruled in June 2022 that the map violated the VRA and ordered the legislature to draw a new map including a second majority-Black district to reflect the census results.^[2] Louisiana's Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin sought a stay of the order from the Fifth Circuit, which was denied. Ardoin then sought relief from the Supreme Court, which stayed the order pending its decision in Allen v. Milligan, a similar redistricting case from Alabama.^[3]

In June 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Allen v. Milligan that Alabama's new redistricting map violated the VRA.^[4] Consequently, the Court lifted its stay of Dick's ruling, returning the case to the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit ordered the state legislature to pass a map compliant with the Allen decision by January 30, 2024, to ensure readiness for the 2024 general elections, or else judge Dick would draw up a new map.^[5] The state legislature held a special session in January 2024 and approved a new map, in which its 6th congressional district became the state's second majority-Black district.^[6]

After the new maps were issued, a group calling themselves "non-African-American voters" filed suit, led by Phillip "Bert" Callais who lived near Baton Rouge, one of the areas impacted by the new maps.^[7] The suit claimed the districts were racially gerrymandered and violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.^[6] Because this was a constitutional rather than a statutory challenge, the case was heard by a panel of three federal district judges from the Western District of Louisiana, rather than a single judge. In May 2024, the panel ruled 2–1 that the new map was unconstitutionally gerrymandered and blocked its use. The state sought a stay from the Supreme Court, arguing it was too close to the election to create a new map. The Supreme Court ordered the state to use, due to the timing constraints, the January 2024 map for the 2024 elections, without ruling on the merits of the panel's decision in substantia.^[8]

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Two separate petitions were filed with the Supreme Court to hear the challenge on the district panel's ruling; one from the state itself (Louisiana v. Callais) and another from Black voters and civil rights organizations such as the NAACP (Robinson v. Callais). The Supreme Court granted certiorari to both cases and consolidated them in November 2024.^[9]

Initial oral arguments were held on March 24, 2025.^[10] On June 27, 2025, the Court ordered reargument for the 2025 term, with only Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting.^[11]

During the summer recess prior to its 2025 term, the Supreme Court directed all parties to submit supplemental briefs as to whether the new maps violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Several news commentators said this move suggested the Court was weighing whether compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act would be unconstitutional, further weakening the VRA.^[12][13][14] Among these briefs was Louisiana's that stated it would no longer defend its position in the case at the Supreme Court, and instead would advance the claim that the new maps violated the 14th and 15th Amendments.^[15]

The second oral session for the case took place on October 15, 2025. Court observers speculated that the court's conservative majority appeared ready to limit the use of the VRA for redistricting by suggesting that the Act's mandates might have a time limit, an argument similar to the one used to end affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. While observers did not expect the Court to strike down Section 2 entirely, they suggested the conservative justices would increase the evidentiary burden for proving racial discrimination in redistricting.^[16][17]

Decision

The court issued its decision on April 29, 2026. In a 6–3 decision, split along ideological lines,^[18][19][20] the court affirmed the ruling of a federal district court panel that the state's new map was an illegal racial gerrymander. The majority opinion was written by Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.^[21] Alito wrote: "Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context. Compliance with section 2 [of the VRA] thus could not justify the state's use of race-based redistricting here. The state's attempt to satisfy the Middle District's ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."^[22]

The decision did not hold Section 2 of the VRA to be unconstitutional, nor did it overturn cases such as Allen v. Milligan (2023), though Alito wrote that "major developments" since one of the last major tests of Section 2, Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), required "additional considerations." Gingles provided for three pre-conditions: that the minority voters were "sufficiently numerous and compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district"; that they voted in a "politically cohesive" manner; and that the majority voted in a bloc as to defeat the minority's preferred candidate. If all three preconditions were met, the court then should evaluate whether the political process was not equally open to minority voters.^[23] Alito said of the first Gingles precondition, computer-aided redistricting tools have advanced enough for plaintiffs challenging maps to demonstrate a map that "fully achieves all the State’s legitimate goals" while creating the majority-minority district.^[23] For the second and third Gingles preconditions, Alito said that under the combination of the US having a two-party system coupled with the ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause that partisan gerrymandering was non-justiciable within federal courts, that "a litigant can easily exploit [Section 2] for partisan purposes by 'repackag[ing] a partisan-gerrymandering claim as a racial-gerrymandering claim.'"^[23] Finally, Alito said, in regards to the final part of the Gingles test, that "things have changed dramatically" in the southern states since the VRA was passed, and "Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate." As such, the addition of the second majority-Black district in the challenged Louisiana maps was racially motivated and not required.^[23][18] He concluded that a successful challenger must now prove that a state "intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race." Failing to "disentangle race from the state's race-neutral considerations, including politics," will now likely lead to an unsuccessful suit.^[19]

In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court "should never have interpreted §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effectively give racial groups 'an entitlement to roughly proportional representation'."^[23]

Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissent, in which Sotomayor and Jackson joined, stating: "The consequences [of the Court's decision] are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today's decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter."^[21] She said that the Voting Rights Act "is —or, now more accurately, was— 'one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation's history.' It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality." Kagan stressed that Congress was the only authority to determine whether the VRA is no longer needed.^[23]

Analysis

Prior to the decision, some analysts said a decision reducing the scope of the VRA could allow Republicans to gain a significant number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives from redistricting in the Southeast, where the VRA has generally prevented Republican-controlled legislatures from maximizing their numbers of "safe" districts. The New York Times estimates that weakening the VRA could shift up to twelve seats from Democratic to Republican control, potentially expanding the Republican House majority.^[24][25] The timing of the ruling would also be critical in relation to the 2026 general election. Some Republican-controlled states, such as Texas, backed by President Donald Trump, had already initiated mid-census partisan redistricting in 2025 that ostensibly secures more Republican representatives in the House.^[24] Democratic-controlled states have proposed their own redistricting to counter these changes, such as the successful attempt in California with Proposition 50.^[26] In December 2025, the Supreme Court allowed the use of the Texas redistricting maps^[27] and accordingly rejected, in February 2026, the Republicans' challenge to California's map.^[28] In March 2026, the Court also blocked a lower court mandate to redraw a congressional district in Staten Island, following a challenge by Black voters in the district.^[29]

Multiple media outlets characterized Callais as a "landmark" decision, suggesting that the additional restrictions on Section 2 of the VRA will likely make challenges to redistricting significantly more difficult. The decision is expected by analysts to allow southern states to eliminate majority-minority districts, a development that would amplify the Republican party's representation in Congress and lead to the effective disenfranchisement of numerous voters.^{[22][21][30][31]} The decision was seen by legal scholars as a culmination of Roberts' efforts to weaken the VRA since he came on the bench,^[32][33][34] while media outlets considered the decision as rendering the VRA all but dead and harming the country's democratic process.^[35][36] Other commentators considered the ruling to start a new era of Jim Crow laws, allowing for legal discrimination of minorities.^[37][38]

Conservative outlets such as the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal praised the ruling, restoring the intent of the VRA to prevent discrimination at the poll, and not for the use in districting.^[39] Trump thanked Alito for "authoring this important and appropriate Opinion".^[40]

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The Supreme Court's decision was issued amid efforts by several states to perform mid-decade redistricting. This movement was initially championed by President Donald Trump during his second term to push for Republican control of the House of Representatives, and was led by a new legislative map in Texas. States with Democratic majorities followed suit to offset these changes, typically by seeking voter approval for new maps, as seen with California's Proposition 50.

The timing of the decision was not expected to have a significant impact for the 2026 general election, as it was issued after multiple states had already begun the primary process, and under the Purcell principle, changes to election laws near an election are generally not permitted by the courts.^[41] Florida, for example, had already begun redistricting before the ruling, as part of the larger national effort to add more Republican districts prior to the primaries, and the state legislature passed the new maps the day the decision was handed down.^[42] However, many southern states initiated redistricting in the few weeks after the decision was issued claiming their existing maps with majority-minority districts were unconstitutional under Callais, even as primary elections were underway.^[43][44]

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill announced the day after the decision that they were suspending the state's May 16 primary to allow the legislature to draw a new compliant map. This occurred despite that mail-in ballots already having been sent to overseas and early-voting residents.^[45] From a request from the state over challenges from minority voters, the district court ordered that their injunction on the 2024 map should remain in place and the state "will be afforded the opportunity to enact a Constitutionally compliant map" with the Callais decision on April 30, 2026. The minority voters challenged this through an emergency request to the Supreme Court, stating that the decision from Callais was still within the 32-day window before it would become finalized as per the Supreme Court rules, and that the Purcell principle, that court decisions affecting elections made too close to the election should not come into effect until after the election, still applies.^[46] On May 4, 2026, the Supreme Court granted the request by the non-black voter respondents to issue a judgment forthwith, making the Callais decision effective immediately, letting the district court order stand and allowing the state to proceed to redistrict for the 2026 election. While the order was unsigned, Alito wrote a concurring statement joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, while Jackson wrote a dissent to the order.^[47]

Alabama, which had been required to include two majority-Black districts from the Supreme Court's decision in Allen v. Milligan (2023), filed an emergency motion with the court the day after the Callais ruling. The motion sought to stay an injunction placed by the District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, which had blocked the legislature's maps in favor of maps constructed by a court-appointed special master. The district court had previously ruled that the legislature's maps remained racially gerrymandered and had ignored the Allen ruling. In its stay motion, the state argued that the Callais decision overrode the Allen ruling, justifying the use of legislature-drawn maps for the 2026 election even though early voting had already begun for the state primaries. Governor Kay Ivey also ordered a special session on May 1, 2026, to initiate the creation of a new redistricting map concurrently with the emergency motion.^[48][49] The Supreme Court granted the state's request, staying the lower court's order on the use of the 2023 maps, on May 11, 2026, via an unsigned order. Sotomayor wrote a dissent joined by Kagan and Jackson.^[50] Tennessee state legislated on May 7, 2026, a new redistricting map that would divide the only majority-Black district.^[51]

• 2025–2026 United States redistricting
• Gerrymandering in the United States
• Redistricting in the United States