Docket Report: Louisiana v. Callais
This is the second blockbuster case of the term, and one with potentially profound implications for our elections. About fifteen years ago, the Court (effectively) disabled the pre-clearance regime of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). That pre-clearance regime required covered jurisdictions to clear changes to their voting arrangements with the Justice Department before they took effect. In the absence of that pre-clearance regime, the muscle of the Voting Rights Act was in Section 2, which provides that jurisdictions will not create voting arrangements that “result[] in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen … to vote on account of race or color.”
In this case, the Court considers a 2024 map of Louisiana’s congressional districts. That map includes two majority minority districts, drawn to respond to an earlier adverse ruling by a district court that the first map—that had only one majority minority district—violated Section 2 of the VRA. The map at issue, in other words, expanded the number of majority minority districts to conform to the VRA. The question now is whether that expansion, and the lines characterizing it, violate the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The lower court held that the second congressional district, District 6, represented an impermissible racial gerrymander—the “distortion of district boundaries … for racial purposes”—in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Louisiana responds that the district court ordered the second district, and that ordinary politics (incumbent protection) were the main driver of the lines during re-draw. (That is, that was the initial Louisiana position—it’s now switched sides.)
At stake, of course, is much more than the fate of a single congressional district. If the Court sides with the lower court and decides that the district at issue is unconstitutional, that would imply that the Court (at the very least) sharply limits the application of Section 2 of the VRA. The strongest version of an affirmance would involve outright striking down Section 2; closely, they could keep Section 2, but say that the creation of this district fails scrutiny. Either way, Section 2 of the VRA is gone or limited. (I should add that this is not the only attack on Section 2—there is also an Eighth Circuit decision saying that VRA does not create a private right of action, that instead enforcement must come through the government. The Court recently stayed that decision, with opposing votes from Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas, suggesting this line has a chance on the Court too.)
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Most observers expect the Court to affirm the lower court. I confess that is my own prediction. The model predicts a reversal, though, led by Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Roberts. Perhaps they will see the case like Milligan, where Roberts recently reiterated that taking account of race was okay in Section 2 line-drawing, so long as it does not predominate in the law-drawing—and that ordinary politics were the main driver of the lines in this case. Perhaps affirming is too disruptive to the current political-legal fabric. It is also quite possible that the model takes a strike on this case.
Vote predictions
