It looks like the U.S. Supreme Court is going to make it harder for federal courts to enforce Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This could protect state lawmakers from challenges that mix race and partisanship in the redistricting process.
The upcoming decision is very important. Two well-known voting rights groups have warned that taking away or limiting Section 2 could give Republican-led legislatures the power to change the boundaries of up to 19 congressional districts to their advantage.
In the re-arguments of Louisiana v. Callais, a conservative majority said they would be open to an approach backed by the Trump Justice Department.
This could make it harder for plaintiffs to win cases of racial vote dilution in places where voting patterns are very similar to party affiliations, which is a defining feature of modern Southern politics.
A federal district court has ruled that Louisiana’s 2022 congressional map is likely to violate Section 2 by putting Black voters, who make up about one-third of the state’s population, into a single majority-Black district out of a total of six.
In 2024, lawmakers took action by passing a plan to fix things that created a second district like this one. But white voters went to court, saying that the changes were an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, and a district judge agreed with them.
The case, which was first brought up last March, is back because the justices have asked for new briefs on whether Section 2 is constitutional.
Louisiana changed its mind last summer and now wants the Court to limit or get rid of race-conscious districting. The black voters who started the challenge stood by the remedial map, saying that it effectively fixes the problem of minority voting power being weakened.
Conservative justices were hesitant to completely strike down Section 2, which was put in place in 1965 and strengthened in 1982 to stop practices that keep minorities from having the same access to the electoral process as everyone else.
Mooppan said that states could defend their maps by pointing to valid partisan goals, even when those goals overlap with racial demographics. This was in response to the 2019 Rucho v. Common Cause decision, which said that federal courts couldn’t get involved in partisan gerrymandering.
This would let mapmakers highlight Republican strengths, for example, as long as their goal isn’t just racial.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the Allen v. Milligan decision in 2023 that says Alabama must have a second majority-Black district, looked into whether this framework fits with Allen and the Court’s Thornburg v. Gingles standards.
The test says that plaintiffs must show that a minority group is not only large and united, but also that they vote in a way that hurts their candidates. Roberts seemed to be more interested in making the proposal fit in with what is already known than in making a big change.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who is an important voice in the Allen case along with Roberts and the liberal justices, brought up the idea of a “sunset” clause for Section 2 remedies. He did this by pointing to cases that limit race-based policies to temporary fixes.
Groups that fight for voting rights and are connected to the Democratic Party are already saying that getting rid of or limiting Section 2 could give Republican-led legislatures the power to change the lines of up to 19 congressional districts to their advantage.
Fair Fight Action and the Black Voters Matter Fund say that if Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is thrown out, it could make it much more likely that Republicans will stay in charge of the House of Representatives for a long time.
If the current legal and political situation stays the same, research has found 27 congressional seats across the country that could be redrawn to help Republicans.
Nineteen of these changes are directly related to the possible loss of protections under Section 2.
Some states are now pushing to make their own version of the “Voting Rights Act” while the country waits for the Supreme Court’s decision.
Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Mississippi, and Johnny DuPree, a Democrat from the state senate, both put forward bills that would create a state-level version of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The law would create a Mississippi voting rights commission. In some areas, this commission would have to give its approval before any changes to election policy or practice could be made. It would also protect people who don’t speak English well and add other types of protection.
