Summary
The Supreme Court held that compliance with §2 of the Voting Rights Act can constitute a compelling interest for race-based districting, but concluded that §2 did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority congressional district. The Court therefore held that Louisiana’s SB8 congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Equal Protection Clause. The Court updated the Gingles framework to require, among other things, race-neutral illustrative maps satisfying the State’s legitimate districting objectives and analyses controlling for partisan affiliation.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether Louisiana's intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district in SB8 violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
- Whether compliance with §2 of the Voting Rights Act can constitute a compelling governmental interest justifying race-based districting under strict scrutiny.
- What statutory and constitutional standards govern a §2 vote-dilution claim involving legislative districting, including the applicable Gingles framework.
Holdings
- Compliance with §2, properly construed, can provide a compelling governmental interest capable of justifying race-based districting, but only when §2 actually requires the challenged districting.
- A §2 plaintiff's illustrative maps must not use race as a districting criterion and must satisfy all of the State's legitimate districting objectives, including specified political goals.
- To establish minority political cohesion and majority racial-bloc voting, a §2 plaintiff must control for party affiliation and show racial-bloc voting 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; remote historical discrimination and present disparities attributed to societal discrimination receive substantially less weight.
- SB8 is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because Louisiana intentionally used race in creating District 6, and the Voting Rights Act did not require the State to create an 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 satisfy the second and third preconditions—politically cohesive voting by the minority and racial-bloc voting by the majority—the plaintiffs must provide an analysis that controls for party affiliation.” (608 U.S. ___, at 30)
Factual background
After the 2020 census, Louisiana retained six congressional seats and enacted HB1, which contained one majority-Black district. A federal district court in Robinson v. Ardoin preliminarily concluded that HB1 likely violated Voting Rights Act §2 because it did not include a second majority-Black district. Louisiana then enacted SB8, creating a second majority-minority District 6 by connecting Black populations in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Shreveport, while seeking to protect Republican incumbents. The Callais plaintiffs challenged SB8 as a racial gerrymander, and the district court found that the map's configuration violated the Equal Protection Clause.
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 an additional majority-Black district. Louisiana subsequently enacted SB8, adding a second majority-minority district. Plaintiffs in Callais v. Landry challenged SB8 as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, while the Robinson plaintiffs intervened to defend it. A three-judge Western District of Louisiana court held SB8 unconstitutional; Louisiana and the Robinson intervenors appealed directly to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court affirmed and remanded.
Remand instructions
The cases were remanded to the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana for proceedings consistent with the opinion.