Supreme Court to hear arguments in pivotal case on the Voting Rights Act

[mahatmakanejeeves]

CASE PREVIEW
Supreme Court to hear arguments in pivotal case on the Voting Rights Act

By Amy Howe
on Oct 10, 2025

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday, Oct. 15, in Louisiana v. Callais, a challenge to the congressional map that Louisiana adopted in 2024 that may reshape the Voting Rights Act. It is the second go-round at the court for this dispute in less than a year; the justices heard arguments in the case for the first time in March, but didn’t decide it during their 2024-25 term. Here is a brief explainer on the long and complicated history of this case.

How did this dispute start?

The dispute began back in 2022, when Louisiana’s Legislature adopted a congressional map with one majority-Black district out of the six seats allotted to the state, although roughly one-third of the state’s population is Black. A group of Black voters went to federal court, where they argued that the 2022 map violated Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act, which prohibits election practices that result in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race.

A federal district court agreed with the Black voters that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2, barred the state from using the map for future congressional elections, and directed the state to draw a new plan with a second majority-Black district. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld that ruling.

In 2024, the Louisiana Legislature drew a new map, known as S.B. 8, that created a second majority-Black district. A different group of voters, who describe themselves as “non-African American,” contended that the 2024 map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander – that is, that it impermissibly sorted voters based primarily on their race, in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. A three-judge district court agreed with them and barred the state from using the map in congressional elections.

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Recommended Citation: Amy Howe, Supreme Court to hear arguments in pivotal case on the Voting Rights Act, SCOTUSblog (Oct. 10, 2025, 9:30 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/10/supreme-court-to-hear-arguments-in-pivotal-case-on-the-voting-rights-act/

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Deadline Legal Blog-The Voting Rights Act is at further risk as the Roberts Court hears Louisiana map appeal

The court will hear oral argument Wednesday in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that could further gut the landmark law that the court has already weakened.

MSNBC: The Voting Rights Act is at further risk as the Roberts Court hears Louisiana map appeal: The court will hear oral argument Wednesday in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that could further gut the landmark law that the court has already weakened. www.msnbc.com/deadline-whi...

— (@jwwcan.bsky.social) 2025-10-15T14:10:59.334Z

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-supreme-louisiana-map-redistricting-rcna237637

While we rightly pay attention to how the Supreme Court is empowering President Donald Trump and his administration, the justices will hold a hearing Wednesday that highlights the Roberts Court’s priorities that predate Trump and will echo long after he leaves office.

Those priorities surface in the appeal, called Callais, with the question lurking in the background of whether the Constitution is “colorblind.” Though it isn’t the direct legal question in the case, it’s a notion that Chief Justice John Roberts and his Republican-appointed colleagues have embraced, notably in the Harvard case that gutted affirmative action in 2023. The Callais appeal raises the prospect of the court cutting out the remaining pillar of the landmark Voting Rights Act on similar grounds. The result could shape future U.S. elections and further help Republicans’ electoral prospects......

Colorblindness
Following the Roberts-led court’s hollowing out of another part of the Voting Rights Act in the 2013 Shelby County case, the remaining safeguard implicated by Callais is Section 2, which prohibits racially discriminatory voting practices or procedures.

The parties present opposing views on whether taking race into account when drawing districts can be necessary to realize the law’s promise or is necessarily anathema to the Constitution in 2025.

“Section 2 authorizes race-conscious remedies only where, when, and to the extent required to respond to a ‘regrettable reality’ of ongoing unequal electoral opportunity based on race,” lawyers representing Black voters wrote to the justices ahead of the hearing. Removing that section’s protections in Louisiana “will not end discrimination there or lead to a race-blind society, but it may well lead to a severe decrease in minority representation at all levels of government in many parts of the country,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, lawyers for Louisiana countered that the “invidious classifications underlying race-based redistricting present the last significant battle in defense of our ‘color blind’ Constitution.” They called the battle an “easy” one, citing the court’s statement in the Harvard affirmative action case that eliminating racial discrimination “means eliminating all of it.” The state said that means “no quarter for race-based redistricting.”

I am nervous. I remember Roberts gutting the Voting Rights Act in his Shelby County opinion where Roberts claimed that all racial discrimination had ended and so the Voting Rights Act was no longer needed.