Louisiana v. Callais and the quiet attempt to end Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act
By a regulated optimist who grades in pencil, votes with both hands, and still believes maps should tell the truth.
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I. The emergency that speaks softly
Some revolutions arrive as fireworks. Others arrive as docket numbers. Louisiana v. Callais is the latter—a case that began as a fight over one congressional map and swelled into a vehicle that could cripple or kill Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the statute that lets citizens challenge election rules that result in racial vote dilution. The Supreme Court heard argument in March, ordered re-argument, and will take it up again October 15, 2025. When courts rehear a case, they are telling you the ground is moving.
Here is the précis: Louisiana's Black residents are roughly a third of the population. After the 2020 census, the legislature drew only one majority-Black district out of six. A federal court found that plan likely violated Section 2, and—applying the familiar Thornburg v. Gingles framework—ordered a map with two Black-majority districts. Louisiana complied with S.B. 8; then different plaintiffs sued to say the remedy was an unconstitutional "racial gerrymander." From that procedural tangle, the Supreme Court has now asked questions that reach beyond Louisiana to the constitutionality and continued operation of Section 2 itself.
This is not a small housekeeping matter. Since Shelby County v. Holder (2013) disabled Section 5 preclearance, Section 2 is the main federal tool left to stop racial vote dilution—especially in redistricting. To gut it would be to take the batteries out of the smoke alarm and say the house is safer.
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II. What the law actually says (and how we got here)
Section 2 forbids any voting rule that "results in a denial or abridgment" of the right to vote "on account of race," assessed under the "totality of circumstances." In 1982, Congress amended it to make clear that plaintiffs need not prove discriminatory intent; showing discriminatory effects is enough. Four years later, the Court in Gingles (1986) distilled a now-canonical test for vote-dilution claims in districting: (1) the minority community must be sufficiently large and geographically compact to form a majority in a district; (2) it must be politically cohesive; and (3) the majority must vote as a bloc often enough to defeat the minority's preferred candidates. Only then do courts weigh the "totality" of history, turnout, discrimination, and other local factors.
In Allen v. Milligan (2023), the Court—5–4, with the Chief Justice writing—applied Gingles to hold that Alabama likely violated Section 2 by creating just one Black-opportunity district out of seven; the justices affirmed a lower-court order requiring a second. That was a surprise to many, not least because a decade earlier the same Court had hollowed out Section 5 in Shelby County. But Milligan was also continuity: Congress meant Section 2 to be an effects test, and the Court (barely) said so.
Callais threatens to turn that continuity into a cul-de-sac. Depending on how broadly the Court writes, it could (a) sharply limit when race may be considered in remedial redistricting; (b) rewrite Gingles so that creating a second opportunity district is nearly impossible; or (c) in the most extreme version, declare Section 2 unconstitutional as applied to redistricting, collapsing the statute back into an intent test the 1982 Congress rejected. The Court's re-argument order and the question presented in related filings leave all three doors ajar.
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III. How we reached this map (and why the name matters)
Start with two lawsuits and one geography: • Robinson/Ardoin (the original Section 2 case) challenged Louisiana's one-district map; a three-judge court agreed that the plan likely violated Section 2 and required a second majority-Black district. The Fifth Circuit left that remedy standing. • The legislature responded with S.B. 8 (two Black-majority districts). • Callais (brought by non-Black voters) attacked S.B. 8 as a racial gerrymander under the 14th and 15th Amendments. A divided three-judge court sided with Callais; the Supreme Court stayed that ruling for the 2024 election and took the case. Now the justices have restored it to the calendar and, crucially, asked whether Section 2 itself remains constitutional in this domain.
The caption matters because it flips the script. In Milligan, minority plaintiffs sought a remedy. In Callais, different plaintiffs attack the remedy—and, increasingly, the statute that required the remedy. This is the long campaign against civil-rights enforcement coming at the map from the other side.
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IV. What's at stake (beyond one delegation)
First, the doctrine. If the Court narrows Gingles—say, by demanding extreme levels of compactness or by redefining what counts as "cohesion"—Section 2 becomes a hallway too tight to walk. If it announces that any race-conscious line-drawing is suspect even when used to cure a Section 2 violation, it will bake contradiction into the law: comply, but don't look like you're complying. And if it accepts the most aggressive invitation—that Section 2 is unconstitutional as applied to redistricting—then plaintiffs would have to prove intent again, a bar Congress lowered in 1982 precisely because intent is hard to show when harm is the cumulative math of a thousand "neutral" choices.
Second, the map. Analysts warn that ending or hobbling Section 2 could lock in congressional control for a long stretch by allowing jurisdictions to revert to single-opportunity maps where demographics support two. The numbers vary by state, but the directional risk is clear. The point is not partisanship; it is representational parity: in places where one-third of the residents are Black or Latino, one-sixth of the seats is not equality—it is arithmetic malpractice.
Third, the signal. After Shelby County, legislatures moved within hours to implement changes long held back by preclearance. If Callais weakens Section 2, expect a similar wave—quiet alterations to districts, runoffs, at-large seats, annexations, precinct consolidations—the small levers that move big things. Section 2 is not just redistricting; it also reaches electoral systems whose "results" suppress minority voting strength. Remove it, and you will not see drama; you will see a slow fog.
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V. The counter-argument, fairly stated
Callais's supporters say: (1) the Constitution is colorblind, and race cannot predominate in line-drawing; (2) Milligan should not require states to sort voters by race; and (3) Section 2, as interpreted, forces unconstitutional racial balancing. They argue the proper remedy for discrimination is race-neutral line-drawing plus heightened proof of intent.
There is force in the warning against crude racial sorting. But Milligan did not demand quotas; it enforced the Gingles predicate that plaintiffs show a geographically plausible, compact district where minority voters can actually elect candidates of choice. It is not racial balancing to require that a third of a state's population receive more than a sixth of its seats when polarized voting is severe; it is a remedy for dilution that would otherwise be baked into the map. Congress wrote Section 2 in 1982 to capture this reality. The Court reaffirmed that reading in 2023. To call the same reading unconstitutional in 2025 would not be fidelity; it would be amnesia.
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VI. The administrative state of democracy (what to do on Monday)
For election officials and line-drawers (yes, even before a ruling):
Pre-compute Gingles feasibility. Maintain public, expert-audited analyses of compactness, cohesion, and polarized voting so remedies don't look like improvisation. (The record the Court will respect is the record you publish.)
Draft race-aware, law-tight alternatives. Where a second opportunity district is possible, design multiple variants along traditional criteria—compactness, contiguity, political subdivisions—to show the remedy's legality without aestheticizing race.
Translate the map. Notices, hearing decks, and shapefiles should be bilingual wherever the electorate is. Confusion is the cheapest form of disenfranchisement; clarity is a civil right disguised as layout.
For litigators and advocates:
Write for two worlds. Build records that win under Gingles, and also—if the goalposts move—under an intent-tilted regime: catalog the emails, pattern evidence, departures from norms, and historical context that show why the "neutral" choice was anything but.
Keep Section 2 alive beyond Congress. If the Court narrows the federal lane, state constitutions and state voting-rights acts (where they exist or can be enacted) become the next front. Draft them now—clear effects tests, private rights of action, fee-shifting.
Prepare the municipal flank. City charters and county rules still decide at-large vs. district elections, runoff thresholds, and staggered terms—all levers of dilution. If federal law shrinks, local reform can hold ground.
For journalists and the public:
- Explain with numbers, not vibes. Show side-by-side maps; publish coalition performance data; do one minute of civic math on air. This is a literacy fight as much as a legal one.
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VII. Three small rooms (because doctrine is a place)
Baton Rouge, 10:02 a.m.
A high-school civics class opens a browser tab: the Supreme Court docket for No. 24-109—Louisiana v. Callais. The teacher asks students to click "Proceedings and Orders," then "Questions Presented." They read the sentence about Section 2's constitutionality and go quiet. This is not theory; it is their district.
Shreveport, 6:40 p.m.
A pastor spreads out two maps on a card table: the one with one Black-opportunity district and the one with two. A deacon points at the street where his granddaughter canvassed last fall. "I want the one where knocking matters." The table nods. Somewhere, a lawyer files a brief.
Washington, 10:27 a.m.
On First Street, the justices take their seats. The question sounds technical: predominance, strict scrutiny, compactness. Down in the briefs, Gingles breathes; Milligan flickers; Shelby County lingers like a warning. Outside, the line is long, the weather is ordinary, the stakes are extravagant.
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VIII. The honest name for what this would be
End or amputate Section 2, and the United States will have told its multiracial democracy to swim without a life vest while insisting the water is shallow. Call it formal equality if you like. The test will be cold and empirical: Who sits in the seats; who has a chance to elect; who watches their vote dilute into politeness.
I am, on good days, a regulated optimist. The regulation is memory. Congress in 1982 wrote a statute for the country we are; the Court in 2023 admitted as much in Milligan. Callais is the attempt to make forgetfulness into principle. The antidote is boring and brave at once: keep the record thick, the math honest, the maps intelligible, the statutes alive at the state level if the federal ones thin, and the public conversation disciplined enough to distinguish representation from rhetoric.
Whatever the Court decides this term, we will still need districts that tell the truth about who lives in them. Democracy begins as cartography and ends as neighbors; draw accordingly.
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Sources (validated)
• Case posture & schedule: SCOTUS docket No. 24-109 (Louisiana v. Callais) and companion No. 24-110; SCOTUSblog preview and consolidation notes; NAACP LDF statement on re-argument.
• Louisiana background (two Black-majority districts; S.B. 8; race-gerrymander challenge): Washington Post explainer; NAACP LDF case page; ACLU case summary.
• What's at stake (constitutionality of §2): Brennan Center amicus/issue explainer; SCOTUSblog coverage.
• Section 2 framework & Gingles: Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) opinion; Oyez summary.
• Milligan (2023) reaffirming §2 effects test in redistricting: Official opinion; SCOTUSblog case file; CRS legal brief.
• Shelby County (2013) disabling §5 preclearance: Official opinion PDF; backgrounders.
• Broader stakes commentary: Democracy Docket analysis; CAP issue brief; Guardian features. (Interpretive but useful context.)