The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on April 29, 2026, in Louisiana v. Callais that the state’s 2024 congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, striking down a map that had created a second majority-Black district and narrowing the legal protections of the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, found that Louisiana did not have a compelling government interest to justify considering race when it drew the 2024 map. Alito wrote that “because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8. That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”
The case arose from a years-long redistricting dispute. In 2022, Louisiana’s Republican-led legislature adopted a congressional map with only one majority-Black district out of six, despite Black voters comprising roughly one-third of the state’s population. A federal judge ruled that map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting discrimination, and ordered the state to draw a new map.
Louisiana’s 2024 map created a second majority-Black district, and Cleo Fields, a former member of Congress, was elected to represent that district in November 2024. However, a group of self-described “non-African-American” voters challenged the new map as racial gerrymandering. A three-judge federal court agreed, finding the state had relied too heavily on race, and the Supreme Court took the case.
The majority’s decision fundamentally altered how courts evaluate Section 2 claims. Under the new framework, plaintiffs alleging vote dilution must now prove that legislators acted with intentional racial discrimination, not merely that the map had a discriminatory effect. Justice Alito emphasized that courts must “control for party affiliation” when analyzing voting patterns, making it harder to distinguish racial bloc voting from partisan voting in states with polarized politics.
Justice Elena Kagan issued a forceful 48-page dissent, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She argued the majority had rendered Section 2 “all but a dead letter” and returned the law to what it was before Congress amended it in 1982 to focus on discriminatory effects rather than intent. “Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote. She emphasized that proving racial intent is “well-nigh impossible” and warned the ruling would lead to a sharp decline in minority representation.
The decision immediately triggered redistricting efforts across the country. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, suspended the state’s primary elections to allow lawmakers to redraw the map. Within hours of the ruling, Florida lawmakers approved a new congressional map aimed at creating four additional GOP-leaning districts. Election law expert Rick Hasen told NPR the decision was “one of the most important and most pernicious decisions of the Supreme Court in the last century,” noting that “what’s left of the Voting Rights Act is a hollow shell of what it was before.”
The ruling is the latest in a series of Supreme Court decisions that have eroded the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, the Court struck down a key preclearance provision, and this decision further limits protections for minority voters by making it substantially more difficult to challenge voting maps under Section 2. Voting rights advocates warned the decision could put at risk at least 15 House districts currently represented by Black members of Congress.
Sources
- SCOTUSblog — Detailed analysis of the 6-3 ruling, the majority and dissenting opinions, and the legal framework for evaluating Section 2 claims
- CBS News — Coverage of the Supreme Court’s decision, Justice Kagan’s dissent, and immediate reactions from White House, NAACP, and GOP leaders
- NPR — Reporting on the ruling’s impact on voting rights, expert commentary from election law scholars, and state-level redistricting responses
