WASHINGTON — A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision involving the Voting Rights Act has prompted warnings from legal scholars and voting rights advocates who argue the ruling could significantly weaken protections for minority voters and increase partisan gerrymandering across the United States.
Louisiana v. Callais and its implications were the focus of a recent analysis published by SCOTUSblog, which reported that constitutional law professor Carolyn Shapiro argued the Supreme Court’s ruling “eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act” and could dramatically reshape congressional and state legislative redistricting.
Shapiro wrote that the decision “effectively overrules the provision of the VRA designed to ensure that minority voters are able to have meaningful representation in multi-member elected bodies” while also “drastically restrict[ing] Congress’ authority under the 15th Amendment.”
According to the article, the ruling has already “triggered yet another round of congressional redistricting to eliminate districts that were drawn to comply with Section 2,” with impacts expected “at the state and local level.”
Shapiro connected the decision to the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause, where the court held that federal courts could not resolve claims involving extreme partisan gerrymandering because the issue presented a “political question.”
Although the court in Rucho stated that “excessive partisan gerrymandering” can lead to results that “reasonably seem unjust,” it concluded that federal courts did not have a role in deciding those disputes. The ruling instead left responsibility for addressing those concerns largely to legislatures and Congress.
Shapiro argued that later decisions expanded that reasoning even further. Referring to the court’s 2023 decision in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, she noted that Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “a legislature may pursue partisan ends when it engages in redistricting.”
The article explained that prior to Callais, plaintiffs challenging district maps under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act were required to produce an “illustrative map” showing that additional majority-minority districts could realistically be drawn while following traditional districting rules and existing redistricting standards.
However, Shapiro stated that Callais “makes the precondition all but impossible to meet” by newly requiring plaintiffs to satisfy not only traditional districting standards, but also “all the State’s legitimate districting objectives, including … the State’s specified political goals.”
The article pointed to Tennessee as an example of how states may respond after the ruling. According to Shapiro, Tennessee lawmakers recently redrew congressional districts to create “nine safe Republican districts” while eliminating “the only Congressional seat held by a Democrat.”
She explained that the redistricting process split the majority-Black county surrounding Memphis into several districts where Black voters would remain a minority population.
Under the new standard described in Callais, challengers would now need to produce a map that both creates a majority-minority district and achieves the legislature’s partisan goals “just as well” as the original map.
Shapiro argued that this approach effectively elevates partisan gerrymandering to “a quasi-constitutional level” and transforms partisan advantage into a legal defense against Section 2 claims.
As a possible response, Shapiro suggested that lawmakers turn to the Constitution’s “guarantee clause,” which states that the United States must guarantee every state “a Republican Form of Government.”
She argued that Congress could use that clause to outlaw partisan gerrymandering not only in congressional elections, but also in state legislative redistricting. The article also suggested that individual states could pursue additional reforms or cooperative policies aimed at protecting representative democracy.
Still, Shapiro acknowledged that “there are no constitutional magic wands” capable of fully restoring what she described as “robust multiracial democracy.”
Quoting late civil rights leader John Lewis, she concluded by encouraging continued political action: “Speak up. Speak out. Get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble and help redeem the soul of America.”
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