The oral arguments in the cases will be heard in October and November, the nation’s highest court announced.
The Supreme Court on Aug. 12 scheduled oral arguments for the fall in major cases, including a redistricting case that could affect the balance of power in Congress.
One newly scheduled case is a challenge to a Colorado law that bans counseling for minors that the state says aims to turn patients away from same-sex attraction. Another case looks at whether a federal military contractor may be sued after a U.S. soldier was injured in a terrorist attack.
The two new scheduling orders cover hearings set for October and November.
The high court said it will hear Louisiana v. Callais on Oct. 15, which is about the use of race in the redistricting process. The court already heard the case in March, but in June, it declined to issue a ruling without offering an explanation. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s decision not to issue an opinion, saying the court had an obligation to resolve the case promptly.
A federal district judge had ruled that a prior version of Louisiana’s electoral map discriminated against black voters because it provided for only one black-majority congressional district, even though blacks comprise almost one-third of the state’s population. The judge ordered the state to create a second black-majority district.
A group of non-black voters sued, arguing the map with two black-majority districts discriminated against non-minorities by engaging “in explicit, racial segregation of voters.”
On Aug. 1, the Supreme Court directed attorneys in the case to address whether the state Legislature’s decision to create “a second majority-minority congressional district violates the 14th or 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”
The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law. The 15th Amendment forbids the federal government and the states from interfering with voting rights based on a citizen’s race.
After the court-ordered changes, Republicans won four of the state’s six U.S. House districts, and Democrats won two in the 2024 elections. Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.) won the election in the newly drawn black-majority district, an elongated district that stretches from Shreveport in the northwest, following the Mississippi and Red Rivers, to the state capital of Baton Rouge. In the 2022 elections, Republicans won five seats compared with the Democrats’ single seat.
