The Supreme Court reheard Louisiana v. Callais on Oct. 15, focusing on whether Louisiana’s intentional creation of a second majority-Black congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments. Louisiana enacted SB 8 in 2024, creating a second majority-Black district after a trial court issued a preliminary injunction blocking the legislature’s 2022 congressional map, which consisted of one majority Black district. A three-judge court in the Western District of Louisiana preliminarily enjoined the court-ordered 2024 remedial map on April 30, 2024, as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander after voters sued. The State and intervenor-appellants took a direct appeal to the Supreme Court, which granted an emergency stay (Robinson v. Callais), allowing SB 8 to be used for the 2024 election while the appeal proceeded. On appeal of the 2024 racial gerrymander ruling, the Supreme Court initially heard oral argument on March 24, 2025, but in an unusual move, restored the consolidated cases to the calendar for reargument on October 15, 2025, to address the broader question of whether intentionally creating a second majority-minority district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment. Ultimately, the court may narrow or rework the framework for when states may consider race to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
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In its supplemental brief ahead of reargument, Louisiana, though formally an appellant, declined to defend SB 8 on the reargument question and urged affirmance of the injunction – effectively opposing the 2024 remedial map ordered by the trial court in the Voting Rights Act challenge. During argument, multiple reports described several conservative justices pressing whether Section 2 requires or permits race-conscious districting and suggesting temporal limits for such remedies, while questions from other justices probed how to reconcile race-neutral principles with precedent like Allen v. Milligan; coverage specifically noted pointed skepticism from Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, and inquiries from Justice Kavanaugh about time limits, with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett less committal. Read more in Politico, CBS News, ScotusBlog, Roll Call, PBS, Fox News, and Election Law Blog.
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[…] to oral arguments in Callais on Oct. 15 was infuriating. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to make the 15th Amendment, […]