The Race To Decide Louisiana’s Voting Rights

Could the Supreme Court upend the midterm elections? The answer will depend not only on how, but when the Nine will rule in a pending dispute over the Voting Rights Act. In Louisiana v. Callais, the high court could be poised to restore the original intent of the Act by insisting on colorblind voting maps. That change would threaten about a dozen Democratic House seats, per an analysis by the Times — but the timing of a ruling would matter.The high court, after all, often holds its most significant rulings for the end of its term, with blockbuster opinions emerging in late June or even early July. Yet a number of states whose districts could be redrawn as a result of a ruling in Callais begin midterm voting, with primary elections, in March and May. Even states with primaries set for, say, August, could be unable to make any changes in a timely manner if a ruling comes down from the Nine in June or July.The Times cautions of a catastrophe for Democrats if the Supreme Court rules that states are barred from creating what it calls “majority-minority districts” designed to “help voters of color elect candidates of their choice.” Such a ruling would mean that “Republican-led states across the South could try to eliminate those districts,” the Times adds, noting that many of these districts are currently “occupied by Democrats.”The dispute in Callais centers on congressional maps of the Pelican State. Since 2022, the state has faced scrutiny for its map, which have six districts, in which but one features a majority of black voters. This raised accusations of racial bias, and a violation of the Voting Rights Act, because blacks make up a third of the state’s residents. Yet the Act was never intended to lead to any kind of explicit quota system for voting districts.That hasn’t prevented the liberal press from warning that the Nine, by affirming the ideal of colorblind election districts, were poised “to gut a key tool of the Voting Rights Act,” as the AP put it, or that the Act “is doomed,” as Vox reported. The Act may be a landmark in America’s path to racial equality, helping to break Jim Crow laws that denied blacks their right to vote. Yet the law in recent years has been misinterpreted by the left. The original text of the law bars any “standard, practice, or procedure” to “deny or abridge the right of any citizen” to vote. Yet liberals took this as the basis to try to ensure that congressional delegations matched up with the racial composition of the various states. In 1982 Congress amended the law to make clear that the Act does not ordain a “right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.”Even so, liberals in many states have sought to draw convoluted voting districts based on race in an effort to ensure that a set number of minorities get elected to Congress. This practice has come under increasing constitutional scrutiny at the high court. The 14th Amendment guarantees “equal protection,” and that, in the Nine’s recent jurisprudence, bars race-based discrimination — including, say, racial preferences in college admissions.A ruling for Louisiana in Callais, then, would be a green light for states to redraw their maps, as the Constitution intends, without giving undue consideration to the race or ancestry of the voters. That would mean, the Times reports, “Democrats would be in danger of losing roughly a dozen majority-minority districts across the South.” That could bolster the GOP’s midterm prospects — but only if the Nine rule on this dispute sooner rather than later.

The Race To Decide Louisiana’s Voting Rights

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