Louisiana v. Callais: The Supreme Court, Jim Crow, and Voting Rights

On April 29, the US Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, eviscerating the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The VRA was enacted in 1965 to protect voters from racially discriminatory election practices. After the ruling, Louisiana Governor Landry ordered immediate suspension of an ongoing primary election for a House seat; the state senate plans to eliminate one of the Black-majority districts. At the time of writing, Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia were redrawing or planning to redraw voting district maps, no longer constrained by the VRA. The Callais decision will have major impacts on the midterm elections and beyond.

To fully comprehend this decision, it’s helpful to review the VRA’s history and purpose. In 1870, the 15th Amendment was ratified, prohibiting federal and state governments from denying or abridging a citizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” But a Jim Crow nation quickly resurrected barriers for Black voters, ranging from poll taxes to violent mobs. After the horrific attack on civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday in Selma in 1964, President Johnson signed the VRA into law on August 6, 1965. The federal government immediately began enforcing the VRA. States, particularly in the south where nonwhite voters were in the majority, created new maps that reflected racial populations.

The VRA includes two sections, Sections 2 and 5, that were once powerful weapons protecting voting rights. Section 5 included a “preclearance” provision requiring states with a history of racially discriminatory voting restrictions to submit changes to election laws or electoral district maps to the federal government for review. These “covered” states were required to show the changes were not discriminatory. In its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the Court nullified Section 5. It concluded that gaps in turnout between Black and white voters had narrowed, rendering invalid the formula used to determine which states were covered. The justices pointed to high Black voter turnouts in 2008 and 2012, conveniently ignoring the possibility that the candidacy of President Barack Obama had driven Black voter turnout rates to high levels. A Brennan Center study found that the turnout gap greatly increased in the 10 years following the Shelby decision in the formerly covered states.

Section 2 prohibits race-based vote dilution, meaning states may not create district maps depriving a group of nonwhite voters of an equal opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. In 2022, the state was successfully sued by voters who argued that Louisiana was “packing” Black voters into a single voting district and diluting their votes - the 2020 census showed that Black Louisianans comprised one-third of the state’s population. The state redrew its map in 2024 to create a second Black-majority voting district.

A group of white voters challenged that map, leading to the Callais decision. The Court concluded that the 2024 map violated the Constitution by taking race into account, and that the VRA did not authorize this consideration. Justice Alito, writing for the majority, proclaimed that Section 2 required a showing that the state “intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.”

Regardless of a map’s impacts on nonwhite voters, a challenge which “cannot disentangle race from the state’s race-neutral considerations, including politics" will fail. In other words, unless state officials confess that their intent is to disenfranchise nonwhite voters (rather than other political groups), no relief is available. Callais now makes it nearly impossible to enforce Section 2.

Southern states are redrawing their voting maps, but the gutting of the VRA runs deeper than federal seats in southern states. State and local offices, school boards, etc., are all affected. In Washington State, GOP lawmakers seek to undo a map redrawn pursuant to a court ruling that an older map diluted Latino votes. Washington enacted a state voting rights act in 2018, and last session, the Washington Legislature passed a preclearance law. But it is at least arguable that under Callais, such laws could be challenged as being racially discriminatory.

What can we do? There are no easy answers, but the threat to our democracy is immediate. Increasing voter turnout, especially in states redrawing their maps to weaken nonwhite votes, is essential. Civil rights groups, including the NAACP, ACLU, and others, are filing lawsuits to overturn “Jim Crow” redistricting. Please stay informed and engaged in state and national efforts to protect the right to vote.

PSARA will alert members to these efforts, and we welcome your ideas and participation. And for now, our board members, civil rights leaders Larry and Rhonda Gossett, advise us all to “Keep hope alive!”