“Panorama of United States Supreme Court Building at Dusk” by Joe Ravi is licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0
SUPREME COURT OCTOBER 2025 TERM—CONTINUING COVERAGE—LOUISIANA CHALLENGES RACE-BASED REDISTRICTING AND SHOULD WIN
INTRODUCTION
On October 15th, 2025, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on yet another challenge to the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, which led to both a District Court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals compelling Louisiana to create a majority-black congressional district in the State. The case, Louisiana v. Callais No. 24-109, may well be the vehicle that fully and finally puts race out of redistricting, as it has been ostensibly removed from race-based admissions by this same Court in a previous Term. Sorting people based upon race, especially to show compliance with a statute that was originally crafted in 1965 and amended in 1982, is as violative of the Equal Protection Clause now as it was then. If curing the South of the ills of Jim Crow was necessary generations ago, it has no place in modern civil society now, as African American engagement in elections is undeniable, and African Americans have achieved elected office in unprecedented numbers in the South and nationwide.
The progress in erasing race sorting in elections has been as slow as our system encourages, as cases percolate like molasses through District Courts, Courts of Appeal, and perhaps the one in thousands that the Supreme Court grants review upon. In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529, the Court, with Chief Justice Roberts writing for a 5-4 majority, held that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act imposes current burdens that are no longer responsive to the current conditions in the voting districts in question. The state in issue was Alabama, which provided overwhelming evidence of minority participation at the polling places and in holding elected offices all over the state. Although the constraints this section placed on specific states made sense in the 1960s and 1970s, they do not any longer represent an unconstitutional violation of the power to regulate elections that the Constitution reserves for the states pursuant to the Tenth Amendment. The Court also held that the formula for determining whether changes to a state’s voting procedure should be federally reviewed is now outdated and does not reflect the changes that have occurred in the last 50 years in narrowing the voting turnout gap in the states in question. This spoke to preclearance requirements that forced designated states in the South with a history of interfering with the minority vote to have their state requirements and procedures “precleared” by the Justice Department prior to implementation. Not only was this a Tenth Amendment violation, but it was also factually obsolete since the overwhelming evidence was that not only was there record minority engagement at the voting place, there was also record office holding by elected minorities. This was no longer 1965, and the Court struck this down, and rightfully so.
Now twelve years later, Section 2 deserves the same scrutiny, as Louisiana states in its briefs that it is in an impossible position. It was ordered to create a second black majority district by a single unelected federal judge. To do so would, in fact, eliminate either Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), the Speaker of the House, or Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) from Congress! Facing a difficult task, a black majority district (SB8) was created by the Legislature essentially under court-ordered duress that also protected Reps. Johnson and Letlow from political extinction notwithstanding the fact that the voters had sent them to Congress and Mike Johnson is House Speaker. This District was challenged as a racial gerrymander and was enjoined by a different Louisiana federal court. Louisiana sought appellate relief and a stay of the injunction. It was in a no-win situation. It reached the Supreme Court, and in an expeditious move, the Court granted certiorari before judgment below and heard arguments in March of 2025. In a further extraordinary procedural move, the Court ordered additional briefing on ONE single issue and withheld ruling, which in my mind signals continuing frustration with racial gaming in state redistricting. They will decide this final issue:
“Whether the State’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. U.S.Constitution.”
This is the heart of the issue. Will race be removed from another societal methodology as it has been from admissions and other areas of the law? Is it time to declare the playing field level and to allow the states to factor in political accountability and fairness pursuant to the Tenth Amendment in making such decisions without Congress’s sword hanging over their collective heads?
THE ISSUES AT BAR
“Under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, no State shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. Under the Fifteenth Amendment, “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged … by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” U.S. Const. amend. XV, § 1.”
Below is the U.S. Code provision known as the Voting Rights Act, originally enacted in 1965 and amended in 1982:
“52 U.S. Code § 10301 – Denial or abridgement of right to vote on account of race or color through voting qualifications or prerequisites; establishment of violation:
- (a) No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color, or in contravention of the guarantees set forth in section 10303(f)(2) of this title, as provided in subsection (b).
- (b) A violation of subsection (a) is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by subsection (a) in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice. The extent to which members of a protected class have been elected to office in the State or political subdivision is one circumstance which may be considered: Provided, that nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.”
LOUISIANA HAS A COMPELLING ARGUMENT, AND ITS BRIEFING MAY WELL FORECAST WHERE THE COURT IS HEADED ON RACE SORTING
Louisiana has stated that it is not now defending SB8, which was the district created under duress, and now, answering the Court’s single question, resists ANY additional black majority districts since, absent an unelected court’s command, one would never have been created. It tells the Court in its supplemental brief:
“…racial classifications implicating the most sacred feature of our democracy—the right to vote—are uniquely odious. They harm voters of all races whose skin colors determine their voting districts. They harm the sovereign States that perennially suffer the indignity of discriminating against their citizens based on race—and then the indignity of being sued for considering race too much or too little. They harm the federal judiciary, which must pick winners and losers based on race. And they harm our stature as a Nation—a Nation that once had the audacity to declare to the world the first truth we held to be self-evident: “[A]ll men are created equal.” Declaration of Independence ¶ 2. That founding declaration rings hollow as long as government-mandated racial discrimination exists in America. “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard Coll. (SFFA), 600 U.S. 181, 206 (2023). There is no safe harbor for racial discrimination the government deems good discrimination. The Constitution instead orders no quarter—relentless enforcement of the “dedicated belief that our Constitution is color blind.”
Louisiana doubles down:
“Race-based redistricting in the name of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) should be no exception. But the Court has nevertheless understood Section 2 to “insist[],” in certain (well, uncertain) circumstances, “that districts be created precisely because of race,” Abbott v. Perez, 585 U.S. 579, 586 (2018)—that is, States must use racial targets to intentionally create majority-minority voting districts. That race-based mandate is unconstitutional. The Equal Protection Clause commands that the government “may never use race as a stereotype or negative.” SFFA, 600 U.S. at 213. Yet race-based redistricting rests on an invidious stereotype: that all minorities, by virtue of their membership in their racial class, think alike and share the same interests and voting preferences. And it uses race as a negative in this zero-sum context by advantaging some racial groups at the expense of others. If that “were not enough,” race-based redistricting under Section 2 also “lack[s] a ‘logical end point.’” It has persisted for over four decades—and its eyes are set on eternity. Just ask Washington, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, all of which have lost their maps to Section 2’s race-based mandate in this redistricting cycle alone. These violations of basic equal protection principles ended race-based admissions programs. They should also end race-based redistricting…”
CONCLUSION
In every redistricting cycle, in every state, the Voting Rights Act has led to extraordinary expense and time as Congress has injected itself on a continuing basis into state-level political decisions that demand race sorting based on generations-old stereotypes. It is time to end this now vestigial holdover from the days of poll taxes and real barriers to the minority vote. The Supreme Court in the Shelby County case declared that sweeping societal changes since the 1965 Civil Rights Act was enacted, along with the Voting Rights Act, now rendered preclearance requirements obsolete. So too must these mandates fall. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and its mandates are unconstitutional as currently applied. I am certain the current Court is leaning this way in the modern era. It promises to be a spirited session on Wednesday.
Mike Imprevento
October 13th, 2025
