The case before the Supreme Court is called Louisiana v. Callais, a redistricting dispute that has become a major test of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), the landmark civil rights law designed to protect Black Americans and other minorities from being shut out of political representation.
At the center of the case is Louisiana’s Congressional map, which (despite the state being nearly one-third Black) originally created only one majority-Black district out of six. Lower courts ruled that this likely violated Section 2 of the VRA, which forbids district lines that dilute the power of minority voters.
But instead of simply defending its map, Louisiana’s Republican leadership has taken a far more aggressive stance: they are asking the Supreme Court to strike down the use of race altogether in redistricting, effectively dismantling one of the core protections of the Voting Rights Act.
The real reason, though, is that they cannot justify their map, it’s a gerrymander designed to ensure minority communities aren’t heard. Rather than fix it, they’re trying to eliminate the very protections that exposed it as discriminatory in the first place. If they succeed, they’ll be free to make it even worse, to redraw districts that silence Black voters entirely and cement one-party control under the guise of “color-blindness.”
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