In a 6–3 ruling, a majority of justices wrote ‘allowing race to play any part in government decision-making’ is a departure from the law.
The U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark decision on April 29 reinterpreted a provision of the Voting Rights Act and struck down a majority-black congressional district in Louisiana, opening the door for more redistricting across the United States.
In a 6–3 ruling, the high court found that the Louisiana district represented by Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.) relied on race when the congressional map was drawn up.
Ruling Impacts Key Voting Rights Act Section
The ruling was authored by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
Alito wrote that “allowing race to play any part in government decisionmaking represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context.”
He said Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is effectively limited to instances of intentional discrimination, a very high standard.
“Only when understood this way does (Section 2) of the Voting Rights Act properly fit within Congress’s 15th Amendment enforcement power,” Alito wrote.
The 15th Amendment, a Reconstruction-era amendment of the Constitution that was ratified in 1870 following the end of the Civil War, allows Congress to pass laws ensuring that the right to vote cannot be denied “on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.”
Interpreting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law in 1965, to “outlaw a map solely because it fails to provide a sufficient number of majority-minority districts would create a right that the amendment does not protect,” Alito argued, referring to the 15th Amendment.
Louisiana Map ‘Unconstitutional’
With the decision, the high court blocked an electoral map in Louisiana that would have given the state a second majority-black congressional district.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was issued amid a battle unfolding between Republican-led and Democratic-led states around the country involving the redrawing of electoral maps to change the composition of House of Representatives districts ahead of the November elections.
“That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander,” Alito wrote for the majority, adding that the Voting Rights Act doesn’t “require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district” and ruling that there is “no compelling interest” that justified Louisiana using race to create Fields’ district.
The U.S. Constitution, he added, “almost never permits a State to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny.”
The decision was issued as other states have moved to implement new congressional districts ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections.
Florida legislators were debating a proposed redrawing of the state’s congressional lines, which was submitted this month by Gov. Ron DeSantis and was intended to give Republicans a chance to pick up as many as four seats in the House of Representatives.
