What the justices signaled in a Supreme Court case that could reshape electoral maps

Geoff Bennett:

The Supreme Court's conservative majority signal today it could upend a central pillar of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, a move with the potential to reshape electoral maps across the country.

Ali Rogin:

The question at the heart of today's arguments is whether lawmakers can use race as a factor when drawing congressional districts. Justices must consider whether the 2024 creation of Louisiana's second majority Black district violated the Constitution.

Here to break down the arguments and the case's potential effects, I'm joined by Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog and David Wasserman of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter.

So, Amy, how did we get here?

Amy Howe:

So this is a long and complicated story, even by the standards of redistricting cases. So, every 10 years, we have a census and then states have to redraw their congressional maps, among others.

So Louisiana redrew its congressional map and in 2022 it enacted a new one that contained one majority Black district. The state's — out of six. And the state's population is roughly one-third Black. So a group of Black voters went to federal court arguing that the new map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race in voting because they said it diluted their votes based on race.

A federal court in Louisiana agreed with them that the new map likely violated the Voting Rights Act, and it instructed Louisiana to draw a new map. So Louisiana drew a new map in 2024 that contained two majority-Black districts. A group of voters who described themselves as non-African American voters went to court, arguing that this map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, that it sorted voters based on their race.

And a three-judge district court in Louisiana agreed with them. So Louisiana and the Black voters defending the 2024 map came to the Supreme Court asking the justices to take up their case. The justices heard oral argument in March on the propriety of the map.

They didn't decide the case by late June, the way that they do with the overwhelming majority of their cases, and instead decided to hear argument again in the fall and asked the litigants to brief a new question, which is whether the intentional creation of a second majority-Black district violated the Constitution.

Ali Rogin:

And among some of the questions that the justices asked were whether or not the Voting Rights Act and the protections in it were meant to be permanent.

Here's what Justice Brett Kavanaugh said.

Brett Kavanaugh, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice:

This court's cases in a variety of contexts have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes for a long period of time, decades in some cases, but that they should not be indefinite and should have an end point. And what exactly do you think the end point should be or how would we know for the intentional use of race to create districts?

Ali Rogin:

And so the topic that Kavanaugh was talking about there, the permanence of the Voting Rights Act, is that something that featured elsewhere in this argument today?

Amy Howe:

Janai Nelson, who was the lawyer representing the Black voters who were defending the map in this case, and some of the liberal justices pointed out that, when you're talking about potential violations of Section 2, you actually look at current conditions. So this is not a question of whether or not there's a logical endpoint.

Ali Rogin:

What are the potential outcomes here? How might the justices decide to roll?

Amy Howe:

So there's a couple of different outcomes. There's a couple of roads that they could go down.

One outcome could be to say that Section 2 is unconstitutional, standing alone. Another one would be one that Justice Amy Barrett raised during the oral argument, which would be to say not that Section 2 is unconstitutional, but that the way that the Supreme Court had applied it in the past few decades has — is itself unconstitutional.

There was some suggestion that the Supreme Court could, depending on the verb that you want to use, clarify or modify some of its decisions interpreting Section 2 in a way that wouldn't strike down Section 2, but would undermine the power of Section 2 and the use of race in redistricting.

Ali Rogin:

David, what are the implications potentially of this case and how might it affect the landscape of redistricting around the country?

David Wasserman, The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter:

Ali, it's hard to overstate the potential impact if the Supreme Court strikes down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which is the only provision really stopping Republican legislatures in the Deep South from completely eliminating districts held by Democrats, and in particular Black Democrats.

Already, we are in the midst of a gerrymandering war between the two parties where, under the direction of the White House, Republicans in a number of states have redrawn or are attempting to redraw their districts to maximize their share of seats. They have primarily gone after Democratic seats in places like Texas, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina that are not majority-minority districts.

But if Section 2 were struck down, then the robust number of districts held by Black Democrats across the South in states like Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, they could be eliminated, leaving Republicans with 12 more House seats and really reducing the competitiveness of the House overall.

Ali Rogin:

And, David, it does seem like, however the justices rule, it's going to make a big impact. But is any of that going to have an effect on next year's midterm elections?

David Wasserman:

That's doubtful. And that's because we're likely to get a ruling at some point in the late spring or early summer of next year.

By then, most states will have seen their filing deadlines close and a lot of states will have held primaries. So it's — it would be too late to alter the election map. That said, if Democrats do take back the House in 2026, this could give Republicans an avenue to undo that with some margin, given that up to a dozen seats or more in the Deep South could be eliminated if there were no protections for minority-majority districts.

And if there were a middle ground ruling, then a number of districts that are similarly unusually shaped alongside Louisiana's Sixth District could be revisited in federal courts. And that could take years to adjudicate.

Ali Rogin:

Big day at the Supreme Court.

David Wasserman, Amy Howe, thank you so much, both of you, for breaking it down for us.

Amy Howe:

Thank you.