In Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 on April 29, 2026, that Louisiana’s congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and, in the same opinion, rewrote how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act works. Justice Alito’s majority opinion held that the state’s second majority-Black district could not be justified as Voting Rights Act compliance, because Section 2 now requires a strong inference that a legislature intentionally drew districts to reduce minority voting power before liability can attach.1Supreme Court of the United States. Louisiana v. Callais Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined the majority. Justice Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson.
The Map the Court Struck Down
Louisiana enacted Senate Bill 8 in January 2024 after a federal court in earlier litigation (Robinson v. Landry) found the state’s post-2020 map, which contained only one majority-Black district, violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. SB8 created a second majority-Black district by drawing a corridor that begins near Shreveport in the state’s northwest and stretches roughly 250 miles southeast toward Baton Rouge, linking distant urban centers through several rural parishes.2SCOTUSblog. Court Weighs Louisiana Redistricting With Second Majority-Black District The redraw raised the Black voting-age population in the new 6th District from about 23 percent to roughly 54 percent.1Supreme Court of the United States. Louisiana v. Callais Cleo Fields won the seat in November 2024.
A group of non-Black voters led by Philip Callais sued, arguing the legislature had used race as the predominant factor in drawing the district, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. A three-judge federal district court agreed, finding that Louisiana’s Black population outside southeast Louisiana was too geographically dispersed to form a naturally compact majority-Black district, and that the 6th District failed traditional redistricting standards like compactness and respect for political subdivisions.1Supreme Court of the United States. Louisiana v. Callais
Why Louisiana’s Voting Rights Act Defense Failed
Louisiana’s core defense was that it had no choice. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits practices that leave minority voters with less opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, and an earlier court had already found the state’s one-majority-Black-district map violated Section 2.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 52 U.S.C. 10301 The state argued SB8 was the required remedy, and that satisfying the Voting Rights Act was a compelling interest that justified race-conscious line-drawing under strict scrutiny.
The majority accepted, in principle, that Voting Rights Act compliance can be a compelling interest. But it concluded that Section 2, properly understood, did not actually require Louisiana to draw a second majority-Black district in the first place. Applying the three preconditions from Thornburg v. Gingles, the Court found the plaintiffs in Robinson had never made out a genuine Section 2 violation.4Justia U.S. Supreme Court. Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986) Without a real Section 2 problem to fix, there was no compelling interest, and the racial gerrymander could not survive strict scrutiny.1Supreme Court of the United States. Louisiana v. Callais
The New Rules for Section 2 Vote-Dilution Claims
The far more consequential part of the opinion is what the Court did to Section 2 itself. The majority said it was “updating” the Gingles framework rather than abandoning it, but each update makes it substantially harder for plaintiffs to win.
A Strong Inference of Intentional Discrimination
Section 2 now imposes liability “only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the State intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.”1Supreme Court of the United States. Louisiana v. Callais For decades, Section 2 was a results-based test: courts asked whether minority voters ended up with less electoral opportunity, without probing legislative motive. The Court has now read a discriminatory-intent element back into the statute, framed as a “strong inference” standard.
Tighter Gingles Preconditions
The Court tightened each of the three Gingles preconditions. On the first, a plaintiff’s illustrative alternative map must create a majority-minority district without using race as a criterion and must satisfy all of the state’s legitimate goals, including traditional redistricting criteria and whatever partisan targets the legislature had in mind. If the state was aiming for a particular partisan outcome, the plaintiff’s proposed map has to hit that outcome too.1Supreme Court of the United States. Louisiana v. Callais
On the second and third preconditions, plaintiffs must show that racial bloc voting cannot be explained by partisan affiliation. Proving voters split along racial lines rather than party lines is extraordinarily difficult in an era when the two are tightly correlated.
A Narrower Totality of Circumstances
Even a plaintiff who clears all three preconditions still has to satisfy the totality-of-circumstances inquiry, and that inquiry has been reoriented. It now focuses on evidence of “present-day intentional racial discrimination regarding voting.” Historical discrimination and present-day disparities described as lingering effects of past societal discrimination now deserve, in the Court’s words, “much less weight.”1Supreme Court of the United States. Louisiana v. Callais
A Hard Line Between Race and Party
The majority drew a firm separation between racial discrimination and partisan gerrymandering. When a state defends its map as politically motivated, plaintiffs carry a “special burden” to prove race rather than politics drove the lines. If either explanation could account for a district’s shape, the plaintiff loses.1Supreme Court of the United States. Louisiana v. Callais The Court tied this rule directly to Rucho v. Common Cause, its 2019 decision holding partisan gerrymandering claims non-justiciable in federal court. Allowing Section 2 liability “based on the racial effects of a political gerrymander,” the majority warned, would let litigants sidestep Rucho by repackaging partisan claims as racial ones.
The Dissent
Justice Kagan wrote that the majority had gutted Section 2. She noted that Congress amended the Voting Rights Act in 1982 specifically to create a results-based test after the Supreme Court had required proof of intentional discrimination in City of Mobile v. Bolden. The majority, in her view, had undone that congressional choice by reading an intent requirement back into the statute under a different label.1Supreme Court of the United States. Louisiana v. Callais
The practical effect, Kagan argued, is that any state can defeat a Section 2 claim simply by asserting a partisan rather than racial motive. Because partisan gerrymandering is legal after Rucho, and because race and party preference are so closely aligned, a state need only “announce a partisan gerrymander” to shield itself from liability. Absent “smoking-gun evidence of a race-based motive,” which she called “an almost fanciful prospect,” Section 2 will play essentially no role in redistricting challenges.
She offered a hypothetical to make the point. Imagine a state with a naturally compact, politically cohesive Black-majority district. The legislature carves it into six pieces and distributes the Black voters across six solidly white districts, wiping out any ability to elect a representative of their choice. Under the old framework, that was classic vote dilution. Under the new framework, a partisan rationale for the split would defeat the claim.
What the Ruling Means Going Forward
For Louisiana, SB8 cannot be used in any future election. The lower court’s order barring the map stands, and the state must draw a new congressional map before the 2026 midterms. The legislature has been considering pushing candidate-filing deadlines back to allow time for a remedial map. Cleo Fields currently holds the 6th District seat, and the district will look very different, or cease to exist in its present form, once new lines are drawn.
Beyond Louisiana, the decision changes how Section 2 vote-dilution cases are litigated everywhere. Pending and future challenges to congressional and state legislative maps must now satisfy the tightened Gingles preconditions, control for partisan affiliation, and point to evidence of present-day intentional discrimination. States defending their maps have far more latitude to draw lines that disadvantage minority voters, provided they can articulate a non-racial, typically partisan, justification. Plaintiffs, meanwhile, face a path to proving a Section 2 violation that has narrowed sharply.