Supreme Court strikes Louisiana majority-Black district

The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down Louisiana’s 2024 congressional map, ruling 6-3 that its second majority-Black district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. (supremecourt.gov) (scotusblog.com) Justice Samuel Alito wrote that Louisiana could not justify using race to draw the district because Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act did not require an additional majority-minority seat. (supremecourt.gov) (cbsnews.com) The case is Louisiana v. Callais. It arose after Louisiana replaced its 2022 map with a 2024 plan that created a second majority-Black district among the state’s six U.S. House seats. (supremecourt.gov) (scotusblog.com) That 2024 map led to the election of Democrat Cleo Fields in November 2024. The justices’ ruling leaves in place a lower-court order barring Louisiana from using the map in future elections. (scotusblog.com) (shreveporttimes.com) The dispute started with the 2020 census. Black residents make up roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population, but the state’s first post-census map had only one majority-Black district out of six. (scotusblog.com) Black voters challenged that 2022 map under Section 2, the part of the Voting Rights Act that bars voting rules and district lines that dilute minority voting strength. A federal judge said the 2022 plan likely violated that law, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld that ruling. (supremecourt.gov) (scotusblog.com) Louisiana lawmakers then passed Senate Bill 8 in January 2024 to add a second majority-Black district while also trying to protect Republican incumbents including House Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Julia Letlow. (scotusblog.com) (lailluminator.com) A group of voters who described themselves as “non-African American” sued, arguing the new lines sorted people by race in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. A three-judge federal court agreed, and the Supreme Court ultimately affirmed that result. (scotusblog.com) (supremecourt.gov) The broader change is legal, not just political. The majority said Section 2 liability now turns on evidence supporting a strong inference that a state intentionally gave minority voters less opportunity because of race. (cbsnews.com) Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. She wrote that the court had made Section 2 “all but a dead letter” and said the new standard will be far harder for plaintiffs to meet. (scotusblog.com) (cbsnews.com) Louisiana now has to move toward another congressional map before the 2026 midterms, with Cleo Fields’s district at the center of the redraw fight the court reopened Wednesday. (scotusblog.com) (lailluminator.com)