Louisiana v. Callais
2026 U.S. Supreme Court case
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Louisiana v. Callais, consolidated with Robinson v. Callais, 608 U.S. ___ (2026), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning racial gerrymandering and redistricting in the state of Louisiana following the 2020 United States census. After the Supreme Court's decision in Allen v. Milligan, the Louisiana legislature produced a new map under court orders, allocating two of the state's six districts as majority-minority districts reflecting the state's 2020 census demographics and in alignment with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The new maps were challenged as a race-driven constitutional violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. In a 6–3 decision, the Court ruled along ideological lines, upholding the federal district panel's judgement that the new redistricting map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Fifteenth Amendment.
Press Robinson, et al., Appellants v. Phillip Callais, et al.
| Louisiana v. Callais Robinson v. Callais | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Argued March 24, 2025 Reargued October 15, 2025 Decided April 29, 2026 | |
| Full case name | Louisiana, Appellant v. Phillip Callais, et al. Press Robinson, et al., Appellants v. Phillip Callais, et al. |
| Docket nos. | 24-109 24-110 |
| Citations | 608 U.S. ___ (more) |
| Decision | Opinion |
| Holding | |
| Compliance with the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to use race as the basis for redistricting. No compelling State interest justified the use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. | |
| Court membership | |
| |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Alito, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett |
| Concurrence | Thomas, joined by Gorsuch |
| Dissent | Kagan, joined by Sotomayor, Jackson |
| Laws applied | |
| Voting Rights Act of 1965 U.S. Const. amend. XIV, XV | |
While the Court declined to find Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, it established additional requirements for vote dilution claims to succeed, beyond the ones set out in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986). Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, held that plaintiffs in Section 2 challenges must demonstrate that a state intentionally redistricted to diminish the opportunity for minority voters. Absent such proof, the Court indicated that such challenges would be deemed nonjusticiable as a partisan gerrymander under the precedent of Rucho v. Common Cause (2019).
Background
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 district 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, Robinson v. Ardoin, 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 VRA case from Alabama.[3]
In June 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Allen v. Milligan that Alabama's new district 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 told the legislature to pass a map with two majority-Black districts by January 15, 2024, or else judge Dick could draw and impose 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 of plaintiffs 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 6th district was 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]
Supreme Court
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]
The first oral argument was held on March 24, 2025.[10] On June 27, 2025, instead of issuing a ruling, the Court ordered reargument for the 2025 term, with only Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting.[11]
During the summer recess before its 2025 term, the Supreme Court directed all parties to submit supplemental briefs on a new question for the justices to decide: whether the new maps violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Law professors specializing in election law and other observers 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] and that the new question presented, together with the decision for reargument, was a sign that the Court was preparing to make major changes in its VRA jurisprudence (as it had done in Citizens United v. FEC).[15] In its supplemental brief, Louisiana said it would no longer defend its position in the case at the Supreme Court, and instead argued that the new maps violated the 14th and 15th Amendments.[16]
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.[17][18]
Decision
The court issued its decision on April 29, 2026. In a 6–3 decision, split along ideological lines,[19][20][21] the court affirmed the three-judge district court's ruling 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.[22] 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."[23]
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.[24] 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" including incumbency protection by "a specific margin of victory" while creating the majority-minority district.[24][25][26] 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.'"[24] 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.[24][19] 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.[20]
_Proportional_Representation_vs_Current_Map.png)
In a concurring opinion joined only by Gorsuch, Justice Thomas contended that Section 2 of the VRA should not apply to districting at all, writing that the court "should never have interpreted" it "to effectively give racial groups 'an entitlement to roughly proportional representation'."[24]
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."[22] 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 accused the majority of reviving the intent-based standard from Mobile v. Bolden that Congress had repudiated in its 1982 amendments to the VRA, which, she said, would make vote dilution cases nearly unwinnable. She stressed that Congress was the only authority to determine whether the VRA is no longer needed.[24]
Analysis
Analysts had predicted that a decision in Callais 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 estimated that, if the Court weakened the VRA, up to twelve seats could shift from Democratic to Republican control.[27][28]
When the decision in Callais was announced, media outlets characterized it as a "landmark" decision, predicting that the additional restrictions on Section 2 of the VRA will likely make challenges to redistricting significantly more difficult. Analysts expect it will 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.[23][22][29][30] The decision was seen by legal scholars as a culmination of Roberts' efforts to weaken the VRA since he came on the bench,[31][32][33] while media outlets considered the decision as rendering the VRA all but dead and harming the country's democratic process.[34][35] Other commentators considered the ruling to start a new era of Jim Crow laws, allowing for legal discrimination of minorities.[36][37] The court's opinion was expected to effect all levels of government including state and local governments.[38][39][40][41]
An analysis from The Guardian found that Justice Alito's claim that Black voter turnout had surpassed white voter turnout in two of the five most recent presidential elections, both nationally and in Louisiana, was based on misleading data and questionable methodology. Alito cited the brief from the Department of Justice which used "a proportion of the total population of each racial group over the age of 18"; however, that approach is "not favored by experts," who instead use "voter turnout as a proportion of the citizen voting age population or the voter eligible population." Following the latter analysis, the gap in voter turnout has actually widened, with Black voter turnout dropping since 2012, particularly after the Supreme Court's opinion in Shelby County v. Holder which struck down the preclearance formula defined in Section 4(b) of the VRA for states with historical discrimination concerns including Louisiana.[42][43]
The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal praised the ruling, which in its view restored the intent of the VRA to prevent discrimination at the poll, and not to be used for districting.[44] President Donald Trump thanked "brilliant Justice" Alito for "authoring this important and appropriate Opinion".[45]
Aftermath
In Louisiana
The day the decision was announced, the non-Black voter plaintiffs who had prevailed asked the Court to make its decision effective immediately, skipping the usual 32-day window, to give the state the option to draw a new map for its 2026 congressional elections. The intervening minority voters asked the court not to do so, arguing that they should have the usual opportunity to seek rehearing and that the Purcell principle (which limits court decisions about election law that come too close before an affected election) should apply. Concurrently, the district court ordered that its injunction on the 2024 map would remain in place and the state be "afforded the opportunity to enact a Constitutionally compliant map."[46] Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill announced that they would suspend the state's May 16 primary to allow the legislature to draw a new, compliant map, even though mail-in ballots had already been sent to overseas and early-voting residents.[47] On May 4, the Supreme Court granted the request, making the decision effective immediately and allowing the state to proceed to redistrict before the election. While the order was unsigned, Alito wrote a concurring statement joined by Thomas and Gorsuch, and Jackson dissented.[48]
In other states
Two challenges to maps drawn from the 2020 census in Mississippi and North Dakota, which had been on the Supreme Court's docket, were added via order on May 18, 2026, with the Supreme Court vacating the current rulings and remanding the cases back to their lower courts to review in light of the Callais decision. Both cases were related to standing relative to the VRA; while both suits were brought by private individuals, the states had argued that challenges to district maps under VRA Section 2 could only be brought by a state attorney general.[49]
When Callais was decided, efforts by several states to perform mid-decade redistricting had been under way for months. At President Trump's urging, Texas with other Republican-controlled states redistricted in 2025 to increase the number of their Republican representatives in the House.[27] Democratic-controlled states, including California, retaliated with their own redistricting.[50] Over the winter of 2025–26, the Court allowed the Texas and then the California maps to take effect, rejecting legal challenges on the grounds that the new maps were driven by "pure partisanship" and thus did not implicate the VRA.[51][52] The Court also blocked a lower court mandate for New York to redraw a congressional district in Staten Island following a challenge by Black voters in the district.[53]
At first, the Callais decision appeared unlikely to affect the 2026 general election beyond the change to Louisiana's map, because states' primary elections had begun or would soon.[54] But despite expectations, several southern states initiated redistricting in the weeks after the decision was issued, claiming their existing maps with majority-minority districts previously mandated by the VRA were unconstitutional under Callais.[55][56] Tennessee Republicans quickly drew and passed a new map that eliminated the sole majority-minority House district in their state.[57] Florida legislators had been debating a redistricting bill to increase the number of Republican-controlled districts in time for primaries, and passed it the day Callais was decided.[58]
Alabama, whose legislature-drawn maps had been replaced with ones drawn by a special master under Allen v. Milligan, filed an emergency motion for the Supreme Court to allow its legislature's map to be reinstated. The state argued that Callais overrode Allen, justifying the use of legislature-drawn maps for the 2026 election even though early voting had already begun for the state primaries. At the same time, Governor Kay Ivey ordered a special legislative session for a new House district map to be drawn.[59][60] The Court granted the state's request, instructing the district court which had appointed the special master to reconsider the matter in light of Callais. Sotomayor dissented, joined by Kagan and Jackson.[61]