Will the Supreme Court Finally Ban Racial Preferences in Voting?

When the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina two years ago, it reaffirmed a fundamental legal principle: Every American must be treated as an individual rather than as a representative of a racial group.

That principle is as essential in the voting booth as it is in the classroom, and next week, the Supreme Court will hear a case—Louisiana v. Callais—that will give it the opportunity to extend it to the ballot box.

The case is a challenge, from “non-African American voters,” to Louisiana’s strangely shaped Sixth Congressional District. It was created in 2022 to ensure two of the state’s six districts are majority-black, a proportion that mirrors the racial makeup of the state, which is 30 percent black.

The case illustrates how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed racial discrimination in voting, has been transformed over the years from a shield against racial discrimination into a sword that compels racial gerrymandering. {snip}

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But Section 2 was dramatically transformed in 1982 when Congress amended it to eliminate the requirement of proving intentional discrimination, replacing it with a “results test.” Courts interpreted this to mean that if minority-preferred candidates did not win seats in proportion to minority population percentages, minority votes were likely being “diluted.” Legislative bodies are now compelled to create as many majority-minority election districts as possible in order to mirror the percentage of black and Hispanic residents in a state, county, or city.

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Louisiana’s congressional redistricting is emblematic of this kind of outcome. Under its 2022 map, one of its six congressional districts was majority-black, even though one-third of the state’s population is black. A three-judge federal court declared this unlawful and ordered the creation of a second majority-black district. The legislature complied by drawing a 250-mile long, bug-splat district from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, slicing apart multiracial neighborhoods to harvest black voters.

Soon after this redrawing, another group of voters, describing themselves as “non-African American,” sued, arguing the newly created district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. A different three-judge panel agreed. Thus, one court ordered Louisiana to sort voters by race, while another condemned the state for doing so. {snip}

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