Recent headlines were apoplectic in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais (2026). The Guardian led with “US Supreme Court ‘demolishes’ Voting Rights Act, gutting provision that prevented racial discrimination.” The Associated Press bemoaned that the “Supreme Court hollows out a landmark law that had protected minority voting rights for 6 decades.”
The response from Democratic politicians made the headlines look tame. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove from California alleged that “this is a larger issue about snatching democracy from the hands of voters across this country, and continuing to demoralize and marginalize the Black vote.” Rep. Yvette Clark of New York, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, feared for minorities below the Mason-Dixon Line and expressed certainty “that the South is primed and pumped to really do some damage.”
So what did the Supreme Court do? Did it revive literacy tests, poll taxes or some more nefarious voter suppression method? No. The court simply held that Louisiana state lawmakers violated the Constitution by gerrymandering the electoral map to create a second majority-Black congressional district. The state argued that it had to draw a map based on race, or else the lower federal courts would have found it had violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The state feared a court-ordered map that might jeopardize the seats of powerful Republican incumbents, such as House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Section 2 prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in a language-minority group. Under congressional amendments enacted in 1982, a plaintiff can establish a violation if, under the “totality of the circumstances of the local electoral process,” the challenged practice or procedure denies a racial or language minority an equal opportunity to participate in the political process.
“Allowing race to play any part in government decisionmaking,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority, “represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context.”
Despite this general rule, the majority held that compliance with Section 2 — as properly construed — can provide reason for race-based districting. However, proper construction, the court reasoned, targets circumstances strongly indicative of intentional discrimination. Section 2 does not forbid states from drawing districts based on nonracial factors such as compactness, contiguity, preservation of existing districts or protection of incumbents.
For example, while there might be public-policy reasons to dislike partisan gerrymandering, nothing in American constitutional law disallows a Republican majority from drawing district maps favorable to the GOP or a Democratic majority from creating a map that will help its candidates to win elections.
“When a State defends a districting scheme on the ground that it was drawn for partisan purposes,” the court explained, “plaintiffs have a ‘special’ burden to overcome.” In other words, to make a successful Section 2 challenge, the plaintiff must disentangle race from politics by proving that race drove the drawing of district lines.
The court stressed that, unlike the early 1960s, when the South was solidly Democratic and the Republican Party virtually nonexistent there, the United States now has a functional two-party system. Hence, it is not sufficient for plaintiffs to claim that, because Blacks vote in large numbers for Democrats, a gerrymander favorable to Republicans is enough to support a Section 2 claim. A plaintiff must show district lines were intentionally drawn to disadvantage Blacks because of their race, not their voting preference. Otherwise, the court reasoned, a litigant could exploit the statute for partisan purposes by repackaging a partisan issue as a racial issue.
In sum, the decision in Callais erects no barriers to minorities registering to vote or exercising the franchise. It does challenge the long-held Democratic assumption that minority voters are entitled to special districts where they can elect Democratic politicians.
The Constitution protects the right to vote, but it does not guarantee that one’s preferred candidate will win. Lonely Republican voters in places like San Francisco and Minneapolis understand this truth all too well.
