Summary
The consolidated cases concern whether Louisiana's congressional redistricting map, adopted after a lower-court ruling involving Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Court held that compliance with Section 2 can provide a compelling interest for race-based districting when properly construed, but concluded that Section 2 did not require Louisiana to create the additional majority-minority district at issue. The Court affirmed and remanded the decision of the three-judge district court.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether compliance with §2 of the Voting Rights Act can constitute a compelling governmental interest justifying race-predominant congressional redistricting.
- How the Voting Rights Act §2 framework applies when a plaintiff challenges the failure to create an additional majority-minority district.
- Whether Louisiana's intentional creation of a second majority-minority district in SB8 violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
- Whether the Robinson plaintiffs established that §2 required Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district.
Holdings
- Compliance with §2, properly construed, can provide a compelling governmental interest capable of justifying the intentional use of race in legislative districting, but only when §2 actually requires the race-based districting.
- A §2 plaintiff challenging the failure to create an additional majority-minority district must offer illustrative maps that do not use race as a districting criterion and that satisfy all of the State's legitimate districting objectives, including specified political goals.
- To establish politically cohesive minority voting and racial-bloc voting by the majority, a §2 plaintiff must provide an analysis controlling for party affiliation and showing racial polarization that cannot be explained by partisan affiliation.
- The totality-of-circumstances inquiry must focus primarily on evidence bearing on present-day intentional racial discrimination in voting; old discrimination and present-day disparities attributed to societal discrimination receive substantially less weight.
- SB8 is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because race played a role in the design of District 6, triggering strict scrutiny, and Louisiana lacked a compelling interest because §2 did not require the additional majority-minority district.
Key quotations
“Compliance with §2, as properly construed, can provide such a reason.” (608 U.S. ___, at 3)
“In short, §2 imposes liability only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the State intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.” (608 U.S. ___, at 26)
“To make the latter showing, plaintiffs’ illustrative maps must satisfy two conditions.” (608 U.S. ___, at 29)
“In sum, because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8.” (608 U.S. ___, at 35)
Factual background
After the 2020 census, Louisiana retained six congressional seats but needed to redraw its districts. A Middle District of Louisiana judge concluded that the State's 2022 map, HB1, likely violated Voting Rights Act §2 because it did not include a second majority-Black district. Louisiana enacted SB8, adding District 6 as a second majority-minority district, in part to avoid a court-imposed map that the State believed would threaten the reelection of important Republican incumbents. A three-judge court found that SB8's District 6 was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because race predominated in its design and the State lacked a compelling interest justifying the map.
Procedural history
Louisiana enacted HB1 after the 2020 census, and plaintiffs in Robinson v. Ardoin obtained a preliminary injunction based on the district court's conclusion that HB1 likely violated Voting Rights Act §2 by failing to include a second majority-Black district. Louisiana subsequently enacted SB8, creating a second majority-minority district. Plaintiffs challenged SB8 in the Western District of Louisiana as a racial gerrymander, and the three-judge court held that SB8 violated the Equal Protection Clause. Louisiana and the Robinson intervenors appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which affirmed and remanded.
Remand instructions
Remanded to the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana for proceedings consistent with the opinion.