Louisiana's Supreme Court case could gut Voting Rights Act

The big picture: In deciding Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court will examine section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a key part of the landmark civil rights legislation. Intended to protect Black voters from disenfranchisement, it prevents race-based voting discrimination.

• For decades, courts have sought to balance racial influence in how maps get drawn to ensure minority voter representation without inadvertently straying into racial gerrymandering.
• Depending on how the justices decide, the case could end the legal basis minority voters use when challenging maps that dilute their political influence.

As a result, wider implications of the court's decision could be "pretty dramatic," says Stuart Naifeh with the Legal Defense Fund.

• "There are places in the country where you cannot provide an opportunity to elect candidates of choice to minority voters without creating a majority-minority district and without considering race in some form," he says.
• "It could leave many places in the country without a remedy, even in extreme cases of racial discrimination and racial vote dilution."

Catch up quick: Louisiana has been in a back-and-forth over its congressional map since the 2020 census.

• Civil rights groups sued the state, saying the map didn't reflect the most recent population statistics, which indicate one-third of the state is Black. Only one of the map's six districts at the time was a majority Black district.
• By 2022, a federal judge agreed with the civil rights groups. As a result, state lawmakers made a new map with a second majority Black district during a 2024 special legislative session.
• But then, plaintiffs who self-described as "non-African Americans" sued the state for relying too heavily on race when it was redrawn. Federal judges agreed, setting the stage on appeals for this week's Supreme Court case.

State of play: Lawmakers essentially sacrificed then-Rep. Garret Graves to get Louisiana a map in 2024, redrawing district lines in a way that protected other, more powerful Republican members of Congress.

• As a result, Rep. Cleo Fields was elected as the second Black member and second Democrat to the state's congressional delegation — but the map-making that made that possible might get tossed in the Supreme Court proceedings.

Between the lines: Even for regular court watchers, this case has been a doozy to follow, with map rewrites, appeals, lawyer firings, and a summer-long delay when Supreme Court judges asked for additional arguments specifically about the Voting Rights Act.

• Perhaps most notable, however, is that Louisiana switched its position because of that request.

Zoom in: At the start of 2025, Louisiana sided with civil rights groups, including the ACLU and Legal Defense Fund, who are representing Black voters, in asking the court to approve its 2024 map.

• But now Attorney General Liz Murrill is asking for the Supreme Court to overturn section 2 of the Voting Rights Act instead.
• "The Constitution forbids sorting voters by race," she said in an August statement. "And telling legislators drawing maps to think about race, but not think too much about race, is an untenable standard."

The intrigue: The plaintiffs in the case have been notably absent in the proceedings and media coverage, including its namesake, a 60-year-old Baton Rouge man, Phillip Callais. The New York Times tried to track them down. What they found.

What's next: Lawyers will make their arguments Wednesday, but a decision timeline is up to the Supreme Court.