LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS, Opinion - SCOTUS
SCOTUSblog
Holding
Because the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the state’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.Judgment
Affirmed and remanded, 6-3, in an opinion by Samuel Alito on Apr 29, 2026. Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Gorsuch. Justice Kagan wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson. Read full timeline: https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/louisiana-v-callais-2/ Read full opinion:In major Voting Rights Act case, Supreme Court strikes down redistricting map challenged as racially discriminatory
The Supreme Court on Wednesday, in the case of Louisiana v. Callais, struck down a Louisiana congressional map that a group of voters who describe themselves as “non-African American” had challenged as the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. By a vote of 6-3, the justices left in place a ruling by a federal court that barred the state from using the map, which had created a second majority-Black district, in future elections. Although Wednesday’s ruling did not strike down a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, as Louisiana and the challengers had asked the court to do, Justice Elena Kagan suggested in her dissent (which was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson) that the majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito had rendered the provision “all but a dead letter.”
The decision was the latest, and presumably final, chapter in a long-running dispute arising from Louisiana’s efforts to adopt a new congressional map in the wake of the 2020 census. The first map that the state adopted, in 2022, had one majority-Black district out of the six allotted to the state. A group of Black voters – who comprise roughly one-third of the state’s population – went to federal court, where they alleged that the map violated Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits discrimination in voting.
A federal judge agreed that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld that ruling. It instructed Louisiana to draw a new map by January 2024 or risk having the court adopt one for it.