Six months after the Supreme Court handed Republicans a major victory in a Louisiana redistricting fight, the consequences are showing up on the maps Americans used to elect their representatives.
Louisiana has already eliminated one of its two majority-Black congressional districts. Alabama has moved to do the same, while Tennessee has redrawn its congressional map to dismantle a majority-Black district centered in Memphis.
The April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais reshaped the political landscape for the midterms, raising new questions about whether Black voters will retain meaningful opportunities to elect candidates of their choice.
Although the Supreme Court stopped short of formally striking down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the provision that prohibits racial discrimination in voting, Justice Elena Kagan warned that the majority’s reasoning had rendered it “all but a dead letter.”
The 6-3 ruling struck down a Louisiana congressional map that included a second majority-Black district, which the state had created after a lengthy legal battle. Black residents make up roughly one-third of Louisiana’s population, but the state’s original map, adopted in 2022, gave Black voters a majority in only one of its six congressional districts.
Black voters challenged the original map under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, arguing that it diluted their political power. A federal judge found that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail and ordered Louisiana to draw a new map. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the key findings and allowed the state to redraw its congressional boundaries.
6 Key Election Races: Live Results, Major Upsets and Historic Firsts to Watch
The revised map created a second majority-Black district and helped Democrat Cleo Fields, a former congressman, win the election to the seat in November 2024. Fields returned to Congress in January 2025, but didn’t seek re-election. Two other Black incumbents who were targeted by redistricting have won.
But the new map prompted another lawsuit, this time from a group of voters who described themselves as “non-African American.” They argued that drawing district boundaries to create a second majority-Black district amounted to unconstitutional racial discrimination.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito emphasized that “the Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race.” He acknowledged that compliance with the Voting Rights Act could, in certain circumstances, justify race-conscious redistricting. However, he concluded that the law did not require Louisiana to create a second majority-Black district.
Alito also argued that Section 2 guarantees minority voters an opportunity to elect representatives of their choice, not a guarantee that their preferred candidates will win. Under the standard outlined in his opinion, a violation occurs when “the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.” As an example, he described a situation in which a state rejects multiple proposed maps containing majority-minority districts without offering a legitimate reason for doing so.
Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, rejected the majority’s reasoning in a dissenting opinion.
The ruling quickly became a blueprint for Republican-led states seeking to redraw their congressional boundaries.
On May 29, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed a Republican-backed congressional map that eliminated one of the state’s two majority-Black districts, the Associated Press reported. Republicans argued that the new 5-1 map would give the party a safer advantage in the state’s congressional delegation and help protect House Speaker Mike Johnson from a difficult reelection campaign.
Democrats argued that the new boundaries packed more Black voters, who tend to support Democratic candidates, into a single district.
During debate, Republican state Sen. Jay Morris, the map’s sponsor, defended the changes as a political calculation.
“I purposely put more Democrats into District 2 to make the remaining districts better performing for Republicans,” Morris said.
Morris also said he instructed the mapmakers not to include racial statistics in the data provided to lawmakers.
Democratic state Sen. Sam Jenkins challenged that explanation, telling Morris, “I think it’s a racially gerrymandered district that’s going to get us into a lot of trouble here.”
“Agree to disagree,” Morris responded, according to AP.
Democratic state Sen. Royce Duplessis described Louisiana’s role in the redistricting battle as a “vicious, vicious race to the bottom.”
Alabama followed with its own fight.
On June 2, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Republicans to use a 2023 legislature-drawn congressional map for the 2026 midterm elections. The ruling effectively eliminated one of the state’s two congressional districts designed to allow Black voters to elect their candidate of choice. The court’s three liberal justices dissented, with Sotomayor writing that the decision “disregards both democratic values and the rule of law,” Reuters reported.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which represents Black voters challenging Alabama’s congressional map, argued that the state had no right to use a map previously found by a court to be intentionally discriminatory. In a court filing, the group’s lawyers wrote, “States have no legitimate interest in furthering racial discrimination, including by using a map that a court has found to be a product of intentional discrimination.
The damage to federal voting protections did not begin with the Callais case. In 2013, the Supreme Court dealt an earlier blow to the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, striking down the formula used to determine which states and jurisdictions had to obtain federal approval before changing their voting laws.
The decision effectively ended the preclearance system that had helped prevent discriminatory voting restrictions before they could take effect. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned in dissent that “throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
The consequences were swift. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced within hours that the state’s previously blocked voter ID law would take effect immediately. Other states followed with restrictive voting measures, while challenges to discriminatory laws increasingly fell to civil rights groups to fight one lawsuit at a time.
Unlike the preclearance system, which required certain states to get federal approval before changing election rules, Section 2 challenges placed the burden on voters and voting rights organizations to prove discrimination after the fact.
The latest Alabama fight offers another example of how those protections have weakened. In June, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that had blocked a Republican-drawn congressional map after judges found evidence that lawmakers had intentionally discriminated against Black voters.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the decision “debas(es) the democratic process by upending Alabama’s entire election in the name of permitting Alabama to discriminate against Black Alabamians” and “corrodes the rule of law by rewarding Alabama’s gamesmanship and outright defiance of court orders.”
Tennessee also approved a congressional map that breaks up a majority-Black district based in Memphis and held by a Democrat.
The consequences are not limited to congressional elections. The Supreme Court’s decision also affects how Section 2 applies to state legislative districts, potentially reducing the number of Black lawmakers serving in state governments.
And the legal fight in Louisiana is far from over.
On Oct. 27, voting rights organizations and civil rights attorneys returned to federal court to defend the state’s only remaining majority-Black congressional district against a new challenge. The hearing focused on whether the lawsuit that led to the elimination of Louisiana’s other majority-Black district could be expanded to target the remaining one, which is represented by Democratic Rep. Troy Carter and includes much of New Orleans.
Sara Rohani of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who argued on behalf of the Black voters involved in the case, criticized the continued legal challenge, saying, “Fair representation is not a game — Black voters are not pawns to be manipulated in order to monopolize power in the hands of the few.”
She added, “We cannot allow this case to continue to erode opportunities for Black voters in Louisiana. The Supreme Court’s Callais ruling was shameful, but letting the Callais plaintiffs continue this case with the sole aim of totally eliminating Black voters’ voices would be an utter disgrace under the law and a complete disaster for our democracy.
Other voting rights advocates echoed those concerns.
Sarah Brannon, deputy director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, warned that the continued legal challenge could further undermine Black political representation.
“Callais has already put Black voters’ voice in our democracy at risk in states across the country,” she said. “Now these plaintiffs want to finish the job in Louisiana by wiping out what remains of Black Louisianans’ ability to elect candidates of their choice. This is exactly the kind of exclusion the Voting Rights Act was written to stop. Courts must not let one damaging ruling become a blank check to silence Black voters in Louisiana.”
Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU of Louisiana, called the decision “one of the most shameful chapters in America’s and Louisiana’s history.”
“Representation is key to true citizenship, because without representation, how do your voice and experience show up in the policy-making process?” asked Ashley Shelton, president and CEO of the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice.
Michael McClanahan, president of the NAACP Louisiana State Conference, warned that the legal challenge could revive attitudes and tactics associated with the Jim Crow era.
“It would be a massive betrayal of federal law for the court to continue to erode the Voting Rights Act’s promise of fair representation,” he said.
The group of Black Louisiana voters and civil rights organizations fighting the challenge, known as the Robinson intervenors, also issued a joint response:
“This attempt to eliminate fair representation for Black Louisianians is what happens when the Supreme Court not only permits but encourages racism to masquerade as partisan maneuvering.”
They vowed to continue fighting in courtrooms, state legislatures and at the ballot box.