Is the Supreme Court About to Make it Illegal to Fix Racist Electoral Maps?

When the Supreme Court unexpectedly ordered reargument in Louisiana v. Callais this past June, the decision revealed exactly what the conservative majority intends to do. The case returns to oral arguments on October 15. It’s expected by many experts that the Court will rule that states cannot remedy racial gerrymandering because any attempt to fix discriminatory maps is itself discriminatory.

The factual background reveals the stakes plainly. Louisiana lawmakers redrew congressional districts in 2022, and the result packed Black voters into a single district while dispersing them across five others. Despite Black residents comprising roughly one in three Louisianians, only one of six congressional districts emerged with a Black majority. Federal courts examined the map under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and concluded it violated the law’s requirement that voters of color have an equal opportunity to elect their preferred candidates. The courts ordered Louisiana to create a second majority-Black district.

Then came the countersuit. A group calling themselves “non-African American voters” challenged the remedial map. They contend that drawing districts to cure illegal racial gerrymandering is itself illegal racial gerrymandering. When the Supreme Court endorses this reasoning, states that violate the Voting Rights Act will face a new set of rules.

Justice Clarence Thomas already telegraphed his position in a dissent when the Court declined to decide the case in June. He argued the VRA cannot justify race-based redistricting unless remedying specific, identified instances of past discrimination. By his logic, addressing systemic patterns of racial vote dilution falls outside the statute’s reach. Thomas wanted to resolve the question immediately rather than wait.

Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill went further in supplemental briefing filed August 27. She declined to defend the remedial map altogether, instead arguing the entire statutory framework imposes an unconstitutional race-based mandate. Her brief describes the Constitution as “colorblind,” a term she deploys to mean the government must refuse to acknowledge harm done to people of color. This reframing inverts civil rights principles. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were adopted specifically to grant Black Americans equal citizenship rights. Murrill’s argument would deploy those same amendments to prevent remedying racial discrimination.

The practical effect of this ruling will ripple nationwide. Racial polarization in voting remains stark across much of the country. In many places, white majorities consistently vote as a bloc to defeat candidates preferred by Black voters. Louisiana has never elected a Black senator. No Black governor has won office there except during Reconstruction, when P.B.S. Pinchback served as acting governor for 35 days in 1872-1873. Outside the single majority-Black congressional district, no Black candidate has won a congressional seat. Without the ability to create districts where Black voters can elect their preferred representatives, the equal opportunity promised by the Voting Rights Act becomes meaningless.

What makes this case particularly concerning is the manufactured quality of the constitutional question. Existing Supreme Court precedent already permits race-conscious redistricting to remedy VRA violations. Louisiana lawmakers could simply assert that courts ordered them to comply with federal law. Yet Republican justices have chosen to rehear arguments because they found a path to the outcome they want. The decision to schedule reargument, without any changed circumstances since the Court first heard the case in March, is a signal that many experts say proves the majority knows exactly how they will rule.

Congress anticipated these exact circumstances when drafting voting rights legislation. The Freedom to Vote Act, which Republican senators blocked from reaching a floor vote in recent years, would have established critical protections. The bill proposed making Election Day a federal holiday, ending partisan gerrymandering, combating voter suppression laws working through state legislatures, requiring states to provide 15 days of early voting including two weekends, expanding voting access through automatic voter registration and same-day registration, increasing election security via a national standard for voter-verified paper ballots, implementing a national voter ID standard with reasonable alternatives like utility bills or bank statements, requiring voting machines to be manufactured domestically, protecting nonpartisan election officials from partisan interference, addressing dark money in campaigns, and making it harder for wealthy interests to dominate elections. All 50 Republican senators voted against advancing the legislation.

The contrast is instructive. While Congress attempted to strengthen democratic participation, conservative legal strategists worked to dismantle existing protections. The timing of this case, combined with the Court’s eagerness to reconsider settled precedent, reveals a coordinated effort to remake voting rights law. When the Court rules that remedying racial gerrymandering violates equal protection, the decision will effectively insulate existing discriminatory maps from legal challenge while preventing states from correcting them.

Voting in Louisiana demonstrates why oversight remains necessary. Racial polarization there is not subtle or debatable. White voters persistently organize to defeat Black-preferred candidates. The state has produced exactly the results this polarization would predict: comprehensive exclusion of Black voters from fair representation. When federal courts ordered a remedy, the state’s attorney general responded by arguing remedies themselves are unconstitutional. This is the landscape in which the Supreme Court will decide whether racial gerrymandering can be addressed at all.

The reargument happens at a moment when democratic participation faces threats on multiple fronts. States continue passing laws that make voting harder, particularly for communities of color. Partisan gerrymandering warps representation alongside the racial gerrymandering the Court is about to protect. The infrastructure that once protected voting rights has been systematically weakened over the past decade. Louisiana v. Callais will deliver another hammer blow against what remains.

The legal theory advanced by Louisiana’s attorney general and embraced by Justice Thomas requires ignoring the purpose and history of the Reconstruction Amendments. Those constitutional provisions were not colorblind. They were adopted specifically to address the subordination of Black Americans and ensure their equal participation in democracy. Invoking them now to prevent remedying racial discrimination perverts their meaning. This argument will command five votes on the current Court.

What makes this especially galling is the remedy at issue here. Louisiana lawmakers had already violated federal law by drawing discriminatory maps. Federal courts identified the violation and ordered compliance. Creating a second majority-Black district simply brings Louisiana into line with what the Voting Rights Act requires. Framing that compliance as itself discriminatory requires treating the original discrimination as though it never happened, or as though addressing it matters more than the discrimination itself.

When the Court accepts this reasoning, state legislators gain a powerful incentive to gerrymander aggressively. They can draw maps that dilute minority voting strength, knowing that any judicial remedy will be challenged as unconstitutional. The legal risk shifts entirely onto those seeking fair maps rather than those drawing discriminatory ones. Elected officials will become freer than ever to choose their voters rather than allowing voters to choose their representatives. Black voters, already facing the longest odds in securing fair representation, will see those odds lengthen further.

Republicans have full control (governor plus both legislative chambers) of 23 states. Democrats have full control of 15 states. Twelve states have divided governments. If every state gerrymanders maximally for partisan advantage, Republicans gain roughly 20-30 additional House seats nationwide while Democrats gain maybe 10-15. Republicans control more state legislatures where redistricting happens. Playing the gerrymandering game means Republicans win the House permanently and SCOTUS is doing everything they can to make that a reality.

Voter suppression follows the same logic. Red states can restrict voting in ways that blue states cannot counter. Texas can close nearly every voting location in Houston. Georgia can close leave boxes of ballots uncounted without consequences. Florida can impose felony disenfranchisement. Blue states making voting easier does not offset red states making voting harder for the populations most likely to vote Democratic. The asymmetry is structural.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule that states cannot remedy racial gerrymandering because doing so violates the Constitution. This means red states can discriminate freely while any attempt to fix that discrimination becomes illegal. The legal framework is designed to lock in permanent Republican advantage.

A few options exist. One option gaining traction is refusal to participate via soft secession policies. That means blue states passing legislation declaring they will not send Representatives to a Congress where the majority is determined by illegal gerrymandering and voter suppression. Withhold congressional delegations. Refuse to recognize the legitimacy of a House controlled through systematic disenfranchisement. Withhold the federal tax payments that fund a government captured through rigged maps by ordering all state business entities to divert their federal tax withholdings to the state government for fraud, waste, and misuse of funds audits where the federal government must demonstrate they are not misusing the state residents tax dollars.

This doesn’t “create” a constitutional crisis, it addresses the crisis at hand. Complying will not stop Republicans. The current system is designed for Republicans to win through cheating. Responding is not extremism. It is the only rational response to a rigged game. Soft secession means blue states stop pretending the federal government represents democratic legitimacy and start building parallel systems of governance that actually protect their residents.

Demand your blue state legislature refuse to participate in a gerrymandered Congress. Call them. Show up at the capitol. Organize public pressure campaigns. Make clear that accepting this rigged system is unacceptable. Some states will have the courage to do this. Others won’t. That tells you which states are actually willing to fight and which will cooperate with their own disenfranchisement.

The Callais ruling doesn’t just allow racial gerrymandering. It locks in Republican control of Congress permanently unless blue states refuse to accept it. Non-cooperation is the only response that changes the game.

We need determination, not despair. We need legislation, and the sheer persistence to keep fighting back. We will win when our representatives realize that they have more to lose by siding with fascists then by representing the rest of us.

If you found this article useful, check out my book “Conservatism: America’s Empathy Disorder,” which explores the psychological and neurological roots of how a political movement can abandon democratic principles in favor of power.

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References

Ballotpedia. (2025). State government trifectas. https://ballotpedia.org/State_government_trifectas

Brennan Center for Justice. (2021). What the Freedom to Vote Act would do. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/freedom-vote-act

Callais v. Landry, 2024 WL 1903930 (W.D. La. Apr. 30, 2024).

Murrill, E. (2025, August 27). Louisiana Attorney General files SCOTUS brief against race-based redistricting [Press release]. Louisiana Office of the Attorney General. https://www.ag.state.la.us/Article/328

Robinson v. Ardoin, 605 F. Supp. 3d 759 (M.D. La. 2022).

Supreme Court of the United States. (2025a, March). March 2025 argument calendar. https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_calendars/MonthlyArgumentCalMarch2025.pdf

Supreme Court of the United States. (2025b, June 27). Louisiana v. Callais, No. 24-109 [Order with Thomas, J., dissenting]. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-109_l53m.pdf

Supreme Court of the United States. (2025c, October). October 2025 argument calendar. https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_calendars/MonthlyArgumentCalOctober2025.pdf

U.S. Census Bureau. (2020). QuickFacts: Louisiana. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/LA

U.S. Senate. (2021, October 20). Roll call vote 117th Congress - 1st session (Vote No. 420). https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1171/vote_117_1_00420.htm

U.S. Senate Historical Office. (n.d.). Reconstruction Louisiana and the case of P.B.S. Pinchback. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/senate-stories/reconstruction-louisiana-and-the-case-of-pbs-pinchback.htm