There was one Supreme Court case that was left off the docket yesterday: It involved redistricting in Louisiana. The Louisiana v. Callais case involves a congressional map that was tossed by a federal court. It gave the state a second black-majority district, according to SCOTUSblog last March.
The state is petitioning the Court to hear their case and reinstate the map, which a lower federal court ruled was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. There are issues about the residents who identify as “non-African American,” but it goes deeper: the basis for which this new map was created might have been a judicial misinterpretation:
Several of the court’s conservative justices expressed skepticism about the map and about whether the 2022 ruling on which Louisiana relied to justify the creation of a second majority-Black district in the state was actually correct, but it was unclear whether those concerns would be enough to uphold the lower court’s ruling.
The court’s ruling, which is expected by late June or early July, could have significant implications not only for Louisiana but also for other states attempting to balance compliance with the Voting Rights Act and redistricting. And with Republicans holding only a slim majority in the House of Representatives, the court’s decision could affect the balance of power there.
The dispute’s path to the Supreme Court on Monday was a circuitous one. After the 2020 census, Louisiana needed to draw a new map for its six congressional districts. Although roughly a third of the state’s population is Black, the map that the legislature enacted in 2022 contained only one majority-Black district.
A group of Black voters challenged that map, arguing that it diluted the votes of Black residents. A federal court agreed that it likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits election practices that result in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote. It instructed the state to draw a new map with a second majority-Black district and barred the state from using the existing map.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld that ruling and instructed Louisiana to draw a new map by Jan. 15, 2024. Without a new map by then, the court of appeals said, the district court would hold a trial and, if necessary, adopt a map for the 2024 elections.
The legislature drafted a new map, known as S.B. 8, with a second majority-Black district that begins in the northwest corner of the state near Shreveport and stretches 250 miles southeast toward Baton Rouge.
The “non-African American” voters then challenged S.B. 8. A three-judge federal district court ruled that the creation of the second majority-Black district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, and it barred the state from using the map in the 2024 elections.
A divided Supreme Court put the three-judge courts’ decision on hold in May, allowing the state to use the map during the 2024 elections, and in November it set the appeal by the state and the Black voters for argument.
After all that, no decision. The Court had a little surprise, as they opted to reargue this case next term.
NEW: The Supreme Court’s morning ends with a surprise — the justices announce that Louisiana v. Callais, a case about a congressional map that the Louisiana Legislature adopted last year, will be re-argued next term.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 27, 2025
