WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday expanded the scope of a Louisiana congressional redistricting dispute that has been pending for months by ordering new briefing on a legal question that could further weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The court issued an order asking the lawyers to address whether, in seeking to comply with the 1965 law that protects minority voting rights, Louisiana violated the Constitution’s 14th and 15th Amendments enacted after the Civil War to ensure Black people were treated equally under the law.
If the court rules that the state did violate the Constitution, it would mean states cannot cite the need to comply with the Voting Rights Act if they use race as a consideration during the map-drawing process, as they currently can.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the UCLA School of Law. wrote on his Election Law Blog that the order “appears to put the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act into question.” That provision bars voting practices or rules that discriminate against minority groups.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority is often receptive to arguments that the Constitution is “colorblind,” meaning no consideration of race can ever be lawful even if it is aimed at remedying past discrimination. In 2013, the court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in a case from Alabama and further weakened it in a 2021 case from Arizona.
The justices heard arguments in the Louisiana case on more technical, less contentious questions in March and was originally expected to issue a ruling by the end of June. Even then, the constitutional issue loomed large.
The new order did not indicate whether the court will hear another round of arguments before it issues a ruling in the case.
The Louisiana map in question, which is currently in effect, includes two majority Black districts for the first time in years.
The complicated case arose from litigation over an earlier map drawn by the state legislature after the 2020 census that included just one Black majority district out of the state’s six districts. About a third of the state’s population is Black.
Civil rights groups, including the Legal Defense Fund, won a legal challenge, arguing that the Voting Rights Act required two majority Black districts.
But after the new map was drawn, a group of self-identified “non-African American” voters led by Phillip Callais and 11 other plaintiffs filed another lawsuit, saying the latest map violated the 14th Amendment.
As recently as 2023, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the Voting Rights Act in a congressional redistricting case arising from Alabama. But conservatives raised questions about whether key elements of the law should ultimately be struck down.
