The U.S. Supreme Court will hear new arguments Wednesday over Louisiana’s congressional maps. State Republican leaders now want to get rid of a majority-Black district they created, and the Supreme Court’s ruling could have national implications.

Attorney General Liz Murrill questions key tenets of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark federal law that has been amended multiple times over the decades to prohibit racial discrimination in elections. Watching closely are Republicans in other states who have pushed to redraw their congressional districts to improve their odds of holding onto U.S. House seats – and their majority status – in next year’s midterm elections.

In Louisiana v. Callais, justices could set a standard for the degree to which race can be considered when drawing election maps.

A group of non-Black Louisiana voters filed the lawsuit after the state legislature, at the direction of Murrill and Gov. Jeff Landry, approved a U.S. House map in January 2024 with two out of six districts being majority Black. A previous map, which a federal district judge rejected, had just one majority-Black seat in a state where Black residents account for one-third of the population.

The governor and attorney general preferred lawmakers maintain control in drawing new congressional district boundaries after the judge invalidated a previous version and threatened to have her court draw the lines instead.

The Supreme Court was originally expected to rule on the Callais case earlier this year. But in a rare move, justices punted their decision to their next term. They also posed new questions for parties to answer: Did the legislature’s creation of a second majority-Black district violate the 14th or 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution?

The 14th Amendment, in part, covers representation in Congress, and the 15th Amendment prevents citizens from being denied the right to vote based on their race.

Since then, Murrill has gone from supporting the map with two majority-Black districts to questioning the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting laws or procedures that purposefully discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group.

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court, Murrill argued Section 2, as it has been applied to Louisiana, is unconstitutional.

“Race-based redistricting under Section 2 is principally unconstitutional because it inherently rests on a racial stereotype: that all voters of a particular race must — by virtue of their membership in their racial class — think alike, share the same interests, and prefer the same political candidates,” she wrote.

To bring a successful case under Section 2, plaintiffs must prove the racial minority in question is politically cohesive.

The Trump administration has filed its own brief echoing Murrill’s arguments.

Like Murrill, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer argues the standard for determining whether a district complies with the Voting Rights Act is flawed and should be altered. The so-called Gingles test, which arose from a 1986 Supreme Court ruling, sets the standards for determining whether election districts meet federal standards.

The Gingles test

Created by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1986 case Thornburg v. Gingles, plaintiffs must show the existence of three preconditions to prove racial vote dilution:

The Trump administration also argues that plaintiffs seeking judicial relief from a violation of Section 2 should be required to take state’s political motivations into consideration when offering alternative districts. For example, this could include drawing a district to not just keep an incumbent in their district but to ensure the incumbent’s victory.

Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive organization that follows redistricting issues throughout the country, said requiring plaintiffs to meet a state’s political goals is among the Trump administration’s boldest proposed modifications to the Section 2 framework.

“Effectively, this is asking SCOTUS to gut the [Voting Rights Act] without saying you are gutting the [Voting Rights Act],” Li said.

In addition to the Trump administration, 16 Republican state attorneys general have signed onto briefs in support of Murrill’s arguments in the Callais case. In the filings, Republicans argue in favor of a “colorblind” approach, in which states would not consider race in the redistricting process at all.

Attorneys with the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund representing Black voters, say the “colorblind” era before approval of the Voting Rights Act was marked by racial discrimination.

“It was an era ‘blind’ to race only in the sense that obvious, widespread discrimination went unaddressed by Congress and courts,” the attorneys wrote in a rebuttal to the Murrill and Sauer briefs.

Press Robinson, the lead Black voter who sued Louisiana over its original, single-Black district map, believes the state should still be subject to its Section 2 requirements. Robinson said he hasn’t observed sufficient progress in the 60 years he’s been involved in politics in the state.

“It’s fairly easy to be arguing that things have changed to the point that there’s no need for special dispensation of Black voters,” Robinson said earlier this month in a news media briefing. “Has Louisiana really changed? I don’t see it. I don’t know what they’re talking about when they say that it has.”

“Louisiana has only been a full democracy since the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 when federal law finally guaranteed Black communities the right to participate equally in our political process,” ACLU of Louisiana executive director Alanah Odoms said at the same news conference.

Attorneys for Black voters in the case called Republicans’ stance a “burn-it-all-down approach” and argued Louisiana would prefer no congressional or judicial oversight for its voting processes.

“Let there be no mistake: That was the situation that prevailed in Louisiana and nationwide for the 100 years before the [Voting Rights Act],” the ACLU and NAACP attorneys wrote. “It was a time when Black voters and other voters of color were systematically excluded from the political process.”

Potential ‘head-spinning reversal’

Until the Voting Rights Act was enacted, many promises of Reconstruction era amendments to the Constitution were largely unfulfilled as Black voters were suppressed under racially oppressive Jim Crow laws.

The Voting Rights Act has been amended five times to strengthen its provisions, though voting rights advocates said federal court rulings over the past decade have chipped away at the law. The most notable crack occurred in 2013 when the Supreme Court ruled Section 5 of the act was unconstitutional. The provision required Louisiana and other listed states and local governments to get federal government pre-approval for any redistricting plan or voting law.

The redistricting cycle based on the 2020 census is the first in which Louisiana was not subject to this preclearance.

Murrill’s defection ended state Republican leaders’ strange bedfellowship with Black voters who challenged the 2022 version of the congressional district map. Both supported the 2024 map, but their alliance came to an end in September when Republicans and groups supporting Black voters filed opposing briefs, teeing up the arguments justices will make Wednesday.

If the justices side with Louisiana and the Trump administration, it would reverse a precedent the court set just two years ago in in Allen v. Milligan, the Alabama case that required lawmakers there to add a second majority-Black congressional district.

“If the Court decides to now undo that precedent, it would be a head-spinning reversal of itself,” John Bisognano, president of the National Redistricting Foundation, a voting rights organization, said in a statement.

Special session questions

There is no set date for when justices will rule on Callais, but it is likely to be next year before the end of June.

In anticipation of the ruling, the Louisiana Legislature is considering a special session in the coming weeks to push back the qualification deadline for next year’s congressional elections. Doing so would give lawmakers enough time next year to adopt a new redistricting plan.

In August, Gov. Landry directed lawmakers to set aside dates for another redistricting special session, but legislative leaders expressed reluctance to do so before justices made a decision in the Callais case. Depending on the court’s ruling, it’s possible Louisiana’s new U.S. House map could have two, one or even no majority Black districts.

Fair Fight Action, a progressive voting rights organization, predicts that if the Supreme Court sides with conservatives and hollows out Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, states could redraw up to 19 majority Black districts to make them competitive or safe seats for Republicans.

NEW ORLEANS – Attorneys representing Louisiana in a lawsuit against the state legislative redistricting plans passed in 2022 are arguing that a key piece of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional and should not be applied to the state.

The case could produce a bellwether decision that impacts Black voting strength in several states where similar challenges have arisen.

Arguments were presented Tuesday to a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case Nairne v. Landry, in which Black voters are challenging the most recent legislative redistricting maps as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

Last February, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District of Louisiana ruled that maps Louisiana lawmakers drew two years ago to update the boundaries of their own districts do not give Black voters a fair opportunity to elect their own representatives. Dick’s ruling came after the 2023 elections, when a new class of lawmakers were elected, yielding a Republican supermajority in both chambers.

While Dick’s ruling blocks legislative elections from being held in every district while the lawsuit plays out, plaintiffs in the case agreed to let special elections for two vacant Louisiana Senate seats go forward in February.

The state has appealed Dick’s decision. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits voting laws or procedures that purposefully discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in a language minority group.

“Conditions that originally justified those measures no longer apply to Louisiana,” Deputy Solicitor General Morgan Brungard argued. “We ask the court to reverse and hold Section 2 unconstitutional as it applies to Louisiana.”

Brungard argued that Black voter turnout in Louisiana is sufficiently high enough that Section 2 is no longer necessary.

The three 5th Circuit judges presiding are James Dennis, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, Catharina Haynes, an appointee of President George W. Bush, and Irma Ramirez, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

For over a decade, conservative attorneys and officials have sought to whittle down the Voting Rights Act. Nairne is one vehicle politicians have sought to use as a test case against Section 2.

Last year, Republican attorneys general from 14 states filed an amicus brief in the case arguing Section 2 is unconstitutional. That action followed a 2023 decision in the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis that only the federal government can seek an enforcement ruling under the Voting Rights Act, rather than individuals.

The federal government and voting rights advocates have pushed back on that stance.

Every case brought under Section 2 is likely to be used as a test case for those that seek to have that portion of the Voting Rights Act overturned, advocates have said.

The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in Nairne in response to the state’s arguments against Section 2 but remained neutral on the other aspects of the case.

Noah Bokat-Lindell, a DOJ civil rights attorney, argued states cannot get a carveout from a generally applicable statute. For example, they cannot become exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act because a state argues it doesn’t discriminate against disabled people, he said.

In a press conference after the hearing, Attorney General Liz Murrill argued that if Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was ruled unconstitutional, Black voters could still count on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“Those are legal arguments that we wanted to preserve so that they eventually might make it up to the United States Supreme Court,” Murrill said. “They’ve also been percolating in a number of other cases related to the scope and continuing application of Section 2 to states under current conditions.”

If Dick’s decision is upheld, legislators will have another opportunity to redraw the boundaries of their districts. Dick, an Obama federal court appointee, did not specify in her ruling the number of majority Black districts necessary to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Plaintiffs have said the state should add six in the Louisiana House and three in the Senate. Currently, 28 out of 105 House districts are majority Black, as are 11 of 39 Senate districts.

State Rep. Edmond Jordan, D-Baton Rouge, who is Black, said he intends to file a bill with a new redistricting plan in the upcoming legislative session, which begins April 14.

Also at issue in Nairne is whether Dick erred in blocking the entire redistricting plan. Attorneys for the state argue the plaintiffs only have standing to challenge the districts where they live.

It is not known when the 5th Circuit panel will rule on the state’s appeal.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.