What justices said during a critical Supreme Court hearing on redistricting and race

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• Geoff Bennett:

  The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments this morning in a dispute over redistricting that could reshape how state legislators draw districts based on race.

  The case centers on Louisiana's congressional map, which was recently redrawn to include two majority-Black districts for the first time in decades. The new map came after a federal court ruled the state's previous congressional maps discriminated against Black voters in the state.

  Now a group of voters who identify themselves as — quote — "non-African American" sued the state, arguing that the map is racially biased towards Black voters.

  Joining us now to discuss the case is Amy Howe, who covers the Supreme Court for SCOTUSblog.

  Thanks for being here.

• Amy Howe, SCOTUSblog.com:

  Thanks for having me.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So this case united different interests, Louisiana's Republican attorney general and the voters who are represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Why is that? And how did this dispute end up before the Supreme Court?

• Amy Howe:

  So, back in 2022, Louisiana drew a new map after the 2020 census, and Louisiana has six congressional districts and roughly one-third of the state's population is Black.

  And so it had one-majority Black district. So this group of Black voters went to court challenging that, saying it was a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits election practices that result in the denial or abridgment of the right to vote based on race.

  And so this federal district court threw out the map, agreeing with the Black voters. The conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld that ruling and said, you need to draw a new map, state, or this federal court will do it for you.

  And so the Louisiana legislature went back to the drawing board, drew a second map with two majority-Black districts, and then this group of non-African American voters came to court saying that this violated the Constitution because it was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. It relied too heavily on race.

  So the state and then the Black voters that had challenged the first map both came to the Supreme Court to appeal, and the state says, look, we're between a rock and a hard place here. We wanted to address this violation of the Voting Rights Act, but we also — once we decided to do that, it was about politics.

  We wanted to protect two powerful Republican incumbents in Congress, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and then Julia Letlow, who's on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

• Geoff Bennett:

  What stood out to you today from during the arguments?

• Amy Howe:

  So, sometimes you can — especially with this conservative court, you have a pretty good idea of where the court was going. Today was not one of those days, unfortunately.

  The conservative justices clearly had some concerns about this map and about the shape of the second majority-Black district, but they spent a lot of time talking about some issues that weren't really before the court, whether or not the first district court decision, throwing out the original map, was correct, and whether or not the state should feel like it had to follow that court order.

  And then Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised the prospect, which he's raised before in an earlier ruling in 2023, that this idea of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act addressing race in redistricting is something that should have a logical endpoint, the same way the court held in cases involving, for example, affirmative action.

  So that they were clearly skeptical, but it wasn't clear whether that — those kinds of sort of concerns are going to translate into a decision that upholds the map or throws it out.

• Geoff Bennett:

  The court heard a similar case, a nearly identical case two years ago, about Alabama's congressional map.

• Amy Howe:

  Yes.

• Geoff Bennett:

  What's the precedent there? And do the justices — I mean, would they feel bound by that precedent in this Louisiana case?

• Amy Howe:

  That is — it was a 5-4 decision. It was a little bit of a surprise after the oral argument, because Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court's three liberal justices in saying that Alabama likely did violate the Voting Rights Act when it created a map that had seven districts. Only one was a majority-Black district and roughly 27 percent of the state's population is Black.

  And so there was that decision. And then there was a decision last term involving South Carolina. A group of Black voters brought that case alleging that they had been moved out of Nancy Mace's district based on their race. The Republican legislature defending that map said this wasn't about race, this was about politics. We wanted to make that a safe seat for Republicans.

  And the Supreme Court ruled for the Republican legislature in that case. So we heard echoes of that decision from the lawyers for Louisiana and the Black voters today.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Amy Howe, co-founder of SCOTUSblog, thanks for coming in. Great to have you here.

• Amy Howe:

  Thanks for having me.

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