Supreme Court Narrows Voting Rights Act, Upending Redistricting Law

Supreme Court Narrows Voting Rights Act, Upending Redistricting Law

Dissenting justices say the decision will render the VRA's prohibition on race-based vote dilution obsolete.

(Photo by Douglas Rissing/Getty Images)

The U.S. Supreme Court has upended the longstanding framework courts use to determine when the Voting Rights Act requires a state to draw additional majority-minority districts, a decision expected to transform the future of redistricting litigation.

In its 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, the court establishes new restrictions on the use of race in VRA lawsuits and requires additional analysis "disentangling" race and partisanship to prove a VRA violation.

Some public officials in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee already have called for those states to redraw their maps now because of the Callais decision. The Mississippi Legislature is set to convene a special redistricting session in late May, and Florida lawmakers have already passed new maps that await the governor's signature.

The court majority intends for its holding to explain how states, courts and litigants can draw district maps that comply with the VRA's protection against race-based vote dilution without relying on race so heavily as to violate the Constitution's prohibition on racial gerrymandering. The dissenting justices, however, say that the court's decision will render the VRA's race-based vote dilution prohibition obsolete and ineffective. Protecting Against Race-Based Vote Dilution

Since its enactment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has played a central role in litigation challenging congressional, state legislative and other state and local district maps. Section 2 of the VRA prohibits race-based vote dilution, meaning states may not adopt election policies and procedures-including district maps-that deprive a group of nonwhite voters of an equal opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

Meanwhile, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits race from being the predominant factor in redistricting. In other words, if race supersedes all other redistricting criteria and drives the mapmaking process, a state will likely be found to have engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. The potential conflict between the VRA and the 14th Amendment may leave states between a rock and a hard place: They must consider race to some extent to comply with the VRA, but they cannot consider race so much that they violate the Constitution.

Louisiana found itself in this situation in 2022 when a federal court held that the state needed to draw a second majority-Black district to satisfy the VRA. After doing so, Louisiana found itself back in court being accused of racial gerrymandering. In Callais, the Supreme Court addressed this tension between the VRA and the Constitution and confirmed for the first time that one of the only justification for using race as a predominant factor in redistricting is a state's attempt to comply with the VRA's protections for nonwhite populations. As a result of the ruling, Louisiana is postponing its May 16 primary elections to allow for the 2026 congressional election to occur under a new map that will eliminate the second majority-Black district seat.

Before the Ruling

In the early 1980s, congressional amendments to the VRA and subsequent litigation cemented a series of criteria, known as the Gingles factors (based on the 1986 case Thornburg v. Gingles), that confirm the need for a majority-minority district under the VRA:

• A sufficiently large, geographically compact nonwhite population: Plaintiffs generally must provide a hypothetical map showing it is possible to draw more majority-minority districts than the state drew in the challenged map.
• Racially polarized voting: Members of the nonwhite population at issue vote cohesively. The white population in the area consistently votes as a bloc to defeat the nonwhite population's preferred candidates.
• Totality of the circumstances: Evidence of various current and historical circumstances in the state or jurisdiction resulting in discrimination against the nonwhite population at issue or otherwise inhibiting their opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. No particular piece of this evidence is required.
• Evidence of intentional discrimination is not required.

After the Ruling

The Callais decision changes this legal framework. Moving forward, courts will need to see the following to decide whether the VRA supports the drawing of additional majority-minority districts:

• A sufficiently large, geographically compact nonwhite population: Plaintiffs must provide a hypothetical map showing it is possible to draw more majority-minority districts than the state drew in the challenged map.
• Race cannot be used as a criterion: The map must be drawn without using race as a criterion and must satisfy all the same redistricting criteria and partisan goals as the challenged map.
• Racially polarized voting: Members of the nonwhite population at issue vote cohesively. The white population in the area consistently votes as a bloc to defeat the nonwhite population's preferred candidates. This analysis must disentangle race and politics to prove that polarized voting is the clear result of race, not difference in partisan preference. Partisan gerrymandering cases cannot be brought in federal court, so a VRA case may not be able to move forward if plaintiffs cannot prove it is about race and not party.
• Totality of the circumstances: Evidence of various current and historical circumstances in the state or jurisdiction resulting in discrimination will carry little weight.
• Evidence of intentional discrimination is required: Evidence of present-day intentional discrimination in voting and elections is weighted most heavily.

This marks a significant change in the litigation and judicial review of VRA cases. Courts will use these new interpretations of the Gingles factors in vote dilution cases to decide whether states need to draw additional majority-minority districts. In racial gerrymandering cases, courts will likewise follow this analysis to determine whether a state's maps are justified by the VRA or violate the Constitution. As future cases start to provide a glimpse into how feasible it is to compile this evidence and how courts evaluate it, would-be litigants will also have to decide whether they want to attempt to pursue VRA claims at all.

Helen Brewer is a senior policy specialist in NCSL's Elections and Redistricting Program.