Supreme Court Strikes Down Louisiana Map, Another Blow to Voting Rights Act

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down Louisiana's voting map, finding that lawmakers had illegally used race when drawing up a new majority-Black district and potentially setting off a scramble in the middle of primary season as states consider drawing new maps.

The decision was 6-3, split along ideological lines. The conservative majority asserted that the opinion was a limited ruling that preserved a central tenet of the Voting Rights Act, but the court's liberal wing, in dissent, argued that the justices had taken the final step to dismantle the landmark civil rights law.

In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the court had kept intact the Voting Rights Act but that Louisiana's new majority-minority district violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

For decades under the Voting Rights Act, lawmakers have created districts where nonwhite voters are in the majority, to protect their ability to elect the candidates of their choice.

But Alito said that "vast social change," particularly in the South, including increased voter registration and turnout by minorities, showed such considerations were no longer necessary.

Instead, he wrote that the justices were updating the 40-year-old framework that courts look to for evaluating the use of race in drawing up congressional districts, essentially saying that the Voting Rights Act only prevents lawmakers from drawing maps that would intentionally limit the power of minority voters.

To successfully challenge district maps under the Voting Rights Act now, Alito wrote, challengers would need to show evidence supporting "a strong inference" that a state "intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race." A legal challenge that "cannot disentangle race from the state's race-neutral considerations, including politics," will fail.

Alito added that the new framework "reflects important developments" since the court laid out factors for evaluating the use of race in voting maps in 1986, writing that in the decades since, "the racial gap in voter registration and turnout" had "largely disappeared."

Justice Elena Kagan, in dissent, countered that the practical effect of the decision would be to make it nearly impossible to use race when drawing up voting maps, writing that "the court's decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity."

Kagan read her dissent from the bench, a rare move that often signals a justice's strong displeasure with a decision.

The decision will boost Republicans before the midterm elections, although it was not immediately clear how much of an advantage they would gain.

Coming in the middle of the primary calendar, there were still multiple states that could draw new maps, citing Wednesday's decision. Republicans in Florida moved swiftly after the announcement. The state's House approved a new map Wednesday morning. Louisiana will likely lose one Democratic district when it finalizes its new map.

Any map that eliminated majority-minority districts and was drawn in the wake of the ruling would likely be challenged in court -- potentially prompting a new wave of litigation.

Rep. Cleo Fields, whose district is at the heart of the Supreme Court case, said in a statement that "the practical effect is to make it far harder for minority communities to challenge redistricting maps that dilute their political voice." Fields, a Democrat, cautioned against immediately redrawing the maps before the November election and pledged "to evaluate all available legislative responses to this ruling and to restore the full protections."

Janai S. Nelson, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said the court technically stopped short of dismantling Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act -- an outcome that she and others had regarded as the possible "worst case scenario."

Still, she said the ruling would have devastating impacts. "What the court did was just as harmful and even more deceptive," she said, adding that she believed the majority was driven by political motivations. "It's a day of loss of any remnant or modicum of credibility of this Supreme Court to rise above partisan politics."

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, cheered the decision, saying in a statement that the court had "ended Louisiana's long-running nightmare of federal courts coercing the state to draw a racially discriminatory map."

Murrill called it a "seismic decision reaffirming equal protection under our nation's laws," adding that she would work with the state's governor and Legislature to craft a "constitutionally compliant" map.

The Trump administration also celebrated the decision. Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, called the decision a "complete and total victory for American voters."

"The color of one's skin should not dictate which congressional district you belong in," Jackson said. "We commend the court for putting an end to the unconstitutional abuse of the Voting Rights Act and protecting civil rights."

Wednesday's decision marks the latest in a series of rulings by the justices that have weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965, often considered the crown jewel of the civil rights-era laws.

The case, Louisiana v. Callais, arose from a dispute over a new voting map drafted by Louisiana lawmakers after the 2020 census. Before then, only one of the state's six congressional districts was majority Black, even though Black Louisianans made up about a third of the state's population.

Two groups of Black voters sued in 2022, after state lawmakers adopted a new map that still included only one majority-Black district. They argued Louisiana had violated the Voting Rights Act by packing Black voters into one district, which had the effect of diluting the power of their votes. A federal judge agreed.

In 2024, state lawmakers tried again, this time adopting a map that included a second majority-Black district. A group of white Louisiana voters then challenged that map, claiming it was an illegal racial gerrymander. They pointed to the boundaries of the new district, which snakes diagonally across the state from the southeast to the northwest.

Lawmakers initially defended the map, arguing that the odd shape was the result of politics, not race. They said that lawmakers created the second district's area to protect high-profile politicians, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican. The court has said it is acceptable to draw maps motivated by partisan advantage.

The Supreme Court first heard the challenge to the Louisiana map in spring 2025, considering whether state lawmakers had properly balanced race and political considerations. But in June, rather than announce a decision, the justices said they would rehear it in the fall. In August, the justices announced they were expanding the case, asking the lawyers to prepare for an argument on a much broader question than they had originally considered: Whether the state's creation of a second majority-minority district violated the Constitution.

That announcement raised alarms among proponents of the Voting Rights Act, who feared that the court's conservative majority -- long skeptical of the legislation -- would use the case to deal a fatal blow to the law and rule its provision requiring lawmakers to consider race was unconstitutional.

Just two years ago, the justices heard a similar dispute over Alabama's congressional map and cited the Voting Rights Act without finding it unconstitutional. In that case, Allen v. Milligan, the Supreme Court ruled that the state's Republican supermajority illegally diluted the power of Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

But in that case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion that he wondered whether there should be a time limit on the ability of states to "conduct race-based redistricting," writing that it could not "extend indefinitely into the future."

During the oral arguments in the Louisiana case, Kavanaugh and several other conservative justices appeared to question whether there should be a sunset to taking race into account in drawing voting maps.

"What exactly do you think the end point should be, or how would we know, for the intentional use of race to create districts?" Kavanaugh had asked a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who argued to uphold the Voting Rights Act.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company

This story was originally published April 29, 2026 at 12:00 PM.