Shortly before 10 a.m. on January 9, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill arrived at the Supreme Court and took a seat in the courtroom’s spectator area. When U.S. Deputy Attorney General John Sauer, the Trump administration’s top court lawyer, walked in a few minutes later, he crossed the room to greet her warmly.
Muriel is awaiting a ruling in a redistricting case that could roll back protections for blacks and Latinos under the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The decision could also boost Republicans’ chances in the U.S. House of Representatives this year.
Louisiana, with the support of the Trump administration and several other Republican-controlled states eyeing the upcoming midterm elections, told the judge it hopes for a decision in early January as the state seeks to replace its current congressional map, which includes two court-ordered majority-Black districts, with new maps for this year’s midterm elections.
But not long after the justices took the bench that day, the gavel came down. Louisiana v. Calais was not decided. No one has come since.
Speculation is growing about the case and its impact on voters and control of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a slim majority. (The justices announced Friday that they will issue additional opinions later this month.)
The case tests Title II of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination and is a remedy often requested by judges when they find that maps weaken the voting rights of black or Hispanic people. The purpose of this “majority-minority constituency” is to give them the opportunity to elect their preferred candidate.
States have been closely watching the Supreme Court’s action, with some anticipating a chance to waive previous court orders and get a chance to redistrict before the November midterm elections. However, as the week goes on, it becomes harder for some places to consider such an option. In Louisiana, the primary deadline was pushed back last year to take advantage of a Supreme Court ruling, but the deadline is about to close.
Regardless of what happens in the current cycle, the Supreme Court’s final ruling is sure to give states more freedom in 2028 and future elections. That’s because over the past two decades, conservative courts have been steadily striking down the Voting Rights Act’s racial remedies and deferring to the rulings of state legislatures.
Court action in the Louisiana dispute so far suggests that most courts will make it more difficult to bring Article 2 claims. The only question is to what extent. In the most extreme case, the courts might strike down Section 2’s minority protections entirely during the redistricting process.
After a round of oral arguments in an earlier court session, the justices abruptly scheduled a second hearing in Louisiana v. Calais and expanded their review of the Voting Rights Act. Based on a second round of arguments last October, the justices appeared ready to further limit the protections of a law considered a model of America’s civil rights era. The VRA was adopted after March 7, 1965, “Bloody Sunday” marchers were attacked while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama.
However, the court majority may be more inclined to accept the Trump administration’s arguments for narrowing coverage than Louisiana’s move to fully repeal VRA provisions designed to prevent racial discrimination. However, even this approach may reduce black representation in public office.
The justices are so divided over past voting rights controversies that the case is likely to produce a series of separate writings from the majority and opposition camps. A final ruling likely won’t be made until later in the spring.
President Donald Trump greets U.S. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. during his address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, March 4, 2025. – Win McNamee/Getty Images
Courts aligned with Trump
The court under Chief Justice John Roberts and the Trump administration are united in their opposition to race-based measures and interest in rolling back federal election regulations. Within days of taking office last year, Trump’s lawyers withdrew a Biden Justice Department brief seeking to preserve a voting rights bill in the Louisiana case.
The Roberts Court began tightening the VRA long before Trump took office.
Rebecca Green, an expert on election law and a professor of law at William & Mary, attributes the pattern to the current majority’s “color-blind” approach in seeking to eliminate racial remedies across the board. This is reflected in the 2023 decision to ban colleges and universities from considering a student’s race in admissions.
In the context of redistricting, some justices have similarly sought to prevent race from being a factor in setting legislative boundaries. But, Green said, “Congress prohibits the dilution of minority votes. And there is really no way to comply with the Voting Rights Act or provide remedies for violations without taking race into account.”
Greene also noted that courts have “doubled down on state legislatures acting in good faith,” such as in December’s order to preserve a new Texas congressional map that was challenged by racial gerrymandering.
The map could add five new Republican seats, stemming from President Donald Trump’s push for off-year redistricting in 2025 to potentially increase the number of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives; California responded with a new map that could add five additional Democratic seats. The Supreme Court also recently allowed the map to continue to exist.
In the high court’s more significant pro-state and local pattern, Chief Justice Roberts led the court in a 5-4 decision in 2013 in Shelby County v. Holder, striking down a provision of the VRA (known as Section 5) that required states with a history of discrimination to obtain approval from the U.S. Department of Justice before enacting election reforms.
Then, in 2021, the majority narrowed the scope of Article 2 to address certain challenges to state practice. Arizona’s Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee case involves requiring the discarding of ballots cast at the wrong precinct and criminalizing the collection of absentee ballots by third parties (such as is sometimes used in the state’s remote tribal areas).
Now, Section 2’s coverage of redistricting practices remains up in the air. The conflict among the judges in the Louisiana case was evident from the start. The dispute was first heard in March 2025, but then in June the judge issued an unusual order requiring new arguments.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the order, making clear that he wanted the court to avoid stalling in finding that Section 2 was unconstitutional because it took into account a voter’s race. “I hope,” Thomas wrote at the time, “that the Court will soon realize that its Article II jurisprudence creates a conflict with the Constitution that is too serious to ignore.”
Thomas’s argument, which has yet to gain majority support, is that Section 2 conflicts with the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. Most recently, in the 2023 Alabama case of Allen v. Milligan, the justices said that the recognition and use of race was not only permissible but may be necessary to remedy previous maps, for example, as a result of legislative “cracking” and “packaging” techniques (i.e., dispersing or concentrating black people across districts).
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas attends the inauguration ceremony in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. – Chip Somodevilla/AFP/Getty Images/File
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who received the crucial fifth vote in the Alabama case, said that some 60 years after the passage of the VRA, Section 2’s race-based safeguards may no longer be needed and, as the court has found in the higher education context, it may violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws. Kavanaugh appears to be the decisive judge here.
Lower court judges hearing the Louisiana dispute ordered the creation of a second majority-Black district after finding that the state Legislature diluted the power of Black voters by dividing them into districts in a racially polarized voting climate. A group of mostly white residents later filed a lawsuit arguing that the revised map was unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.
The state initially defended the revised maps, but Attorney General Muriel and her legal team recently argued that “race-based redistricting fundamentally violates our Constitution” once a judge reshuffles the case.
The U.S. Solicitor General’s Office didn’t go that far. Instead, it focuses first on how lower court judges evaluate VRA violations and whether the Legislature’s map may be driven by politics rather than race.
“In short,” Sauer wrote in the federal brief, “this Court’s Section 2 jurisprudence should take into account the fact that today, a state’s failure to create a compact majority-minority district, even when demographically possible, is more likely to reflect political rather than racial motivations.”
Kavanaugh seized on the option regarding the country’s “political goals.” He calls it “real innovation.”
Under the U.S. Attorney General’s approach, challengers seeking to succeed on VRA Section 2 claims must separate party from race and show that the state’s failure to create a majority-minority district reflects racial motivations, not political ones.
Critics, including Harvard Law Professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos, say it could eliminate Section 2’s claims, especially in the South, where blacks overwhelmingly vote Democratic and whites overwhelmingly vote Republican. Lawmakers can assert that the arguably discriminatory map protects incumbents and maintains partisan balance.
“The attorney general’s position will render Title 2 a dead letter in the Southern jurisdictions where it has historically had the greatest impact,” Stephanopoulos said of the attorney general’s position, noting that additional minority districts often only come at the expense of existing Republican districts. “However, trading an old Republican district for a new minority opportunity district is exactly what the Secretary’s proposal would prevent.”
During oral arguments in October, Janai Nelson, director and counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told Kavanaugh that requiring new scrutiny of partisanship could undermine the state’s responsibility “to ensure that all voters have an equal and open election process.”
“The fact that Black voters may be associated with voting Democratic and white voters may be associated with voting Republican does not negate the fact that there is racially polarized voting,” Nelson said. “This entire situation, including the inability to elect Black candidates to multiple offices statewide in Louisiana — no Black person has ever been elected statewide in Louisiana — is further evidence that race plays an outsized role in Louisiana’s electoral process.”
Meanwhile, the state Legislature postponed midterm election filing deadlines as Muriel and other Louisiana officials anticipated a high court ruling and a possible chance to change the current map of two majority-Black districts.
But the filing period for the regular primary is now determined by the candidate. The deadline is Friday, and the judges are not expected to return to court until February 20.
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