Samuel Alito justified a Supreme Court ruling that threatens majority-Black voting districts

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and sharply narrowed how the Voting Rights Act can be used to challenge discriminatory election maps.

In a 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the conservative majority that Louisiana did not need to create a second majority-Black district under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, even though a lower federal court had previously found the state’s earlier congressional map likely violated that same law for failing to do so.

“Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to enforce the Constitution, not collide with it,” Alito wrote. He said lower courts had sometimes applied the law in ways that “force States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids.”

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Passed in 1965 after Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, and the broader civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act became one of the nation’s strongest civil rights laws, banning literacy tests and giving the federal government broad power to block discriminatory election laws and maps. But the court’s conservative majority has steadily weakened it, most notably in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted federal preclearance protections, and in 2021’s Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, which narrowed Section 2 challenges. Wednesday’s ruling adds another major restriction.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined the opinion. Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

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The case centered on Louisiana’s congressional map, known as SB8. After a federal judge found the state’s prior map, with only one majority-Black district despite Black residents making up roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population, likely violated Section 2, lawmakers redrew the map to create a second majority-Black district stretching roughly 250 miles from Baton Rouge to Shreveport.

The state also sought to protect key Republican incumbents, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. But the court found race predominated in the district’s design and said Section 2 did not actually require Louisiana to create it.

The ruling also makes future Voting Rights Act lawsuits harder to win. Plaintiffs must now prove alternative maps satisfy all of a state’s legitimate political goals, including partisan interests, and must “disentangle race from politics” by showing racial polarization cannot simply be explained by party affiliation.

Kagan’s dissent was blistering.

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“The Court today writes another chapter in a dismal story of American democracy,” she wrote. She warned: “The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.” In states still marked by “residential segregation and racially polarized voting,” she said, minority voters “can now be cracked out of the electoral process.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the ruling a direct assault on voting rights.

“The corrupt conservative majority on the Supreme Court appointed by Donald Trump has taken a blowtorch to the Voting Rights Act,” Jeffries said. “Why? The extremists need to cheat to win.”

He accused Republicans of embracing “voter suppression and racial gerrymandering to desperately cling to power” and renewed calls for passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley called the ruling “an assault on our democracy and Black political power.”

“With this shameful ruling, the Supreme Court is once again complicit in Republicans’ assault on our democracy and Black political power,” Pressley said. “This decision will disenfranchise millions of people, further weaken the Voting Rights Act, and embolden racial discrimination in our elections.”

Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said the ruling threatens “the fundamental promise at the heart of our democracy: that every voter deserves an equal voice in electing their government.”

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“Any attempt to silence the vote of even one American hurts all 300 million of us,” she said. “ As we approach the midterm elections, HRC is committed to mobilizing across the country, showing up for pro-equality candidates, and fighting for the kind of democracy we all deserve.”

“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,” Kagan wrote.