Supreme Court 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais gutted Voting Rights Act minority-district protections, enabling states to eliminate minority seats

On April 29, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, holding that Louisiana's second majority-Black congressional district — drawn in 2024 under federal court order to comply with the Voting Rights Act — was itself an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Samuel Alito authored the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

Alito's opinion substantially reworked the Thornburg v. Gingles framework (1986), which for four decades had governed Section 2 vote-dilution claims. Under Gingles, plaintiffs could succeed by demonstrating the effects of a challenged map diminished minority voting power. The Callais majority replaced that standard with a heightened intent requirement: plaintiffs must now demonstrate a "strong inference" that a state intentionally drew districts to deny minority voters equal electoral opportunity. The ruling also created a structural double bind — states ordered by courts to draw minority-opportunity districts could see those same districts struck down as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, dissented, writing that the majority's changes would "eviscerate" the VRA and that consequences for minority political representation were "likely to be far-reaching and grave." Within days, Republican-led states across the South — including Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, and Florida — enacted or announced new congressional maps eliminating majority-Black or majority-Latino districts, citing Callais as legal authority.

Updates

2026-05-18 — Court vacated and remanded two Section 2 cases in light of Callais [3]

The Supreme Court vacated and remanded Bd. of Election Comm'rs v. NAACP and Turtle Mountain Band v. Howe "in light of" Callais, without resolving whether private parties retain a right to sue under Section 2 and leaving a circuit split in place.

2026-06-02 — Court allowed Alabama to proceed with map eliminating majority-Black district [4]

In an unsigned 6-3 order, the Supreme Court stayed a lower court ruling that had blocked Alabama's 2023 congressional map — a map a three-judge federal panel found intentionally diluted Black voters' strength in violation of the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. The Court held the lower court's analysis departed from Callais, allowing Alabama to use the map for the 2026 elections.