In 1965, The Voting Rights Act was a follow up legislation to the Civil Rights Act passed just a year earlier. The law primarily ended the discriminatory practices against Black voters, including poll taxes and literacy tests that allowed for them to be turned away.
In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case from Alabama, according to AP News. The ruling forced Alabama to redraw their congressional maps to give Black residents greater representation. A move that sent two Black lawmakers to Washington D.C.
On Wednesday, Oct. 15, voting rights activists gathered outside the Supreme Court in Washington as the justices prepared to take up a Republican-led challenge to the Voting Rights Act – again.
For 39 years, Section 2 has required redistricting institutions to consider racial and ethnic minority representation while devising congressional districts. Historically, some states have redistricted minorities to dilute their voting power, such as “cracking” a community into multiple districts where they only account for a small percentage of the electorate.
Louisiana v. Callais is the case in question and is one that scrutinizes whether Section 2 is constitutional.
It arises from a lawsuit by black voters in Louisiana seeking to force the state to draw a second majority black congressional district, BBC reports. They argue this would “more accurately reflect the state’s demographic composition.”
Approximately 31% of Louisiana’s population is black, CBS states, but only one of the state’s six congressional districts has a black majority.
“We only have the diversity we see across the south because of litigation that forced the creation of opportunity districts under the Voting Rights Act,” said Janai Nelson, who represented the original group of black Louisiana voters.
Multiple sources believe after two and a half hours of arguments, the court’s six conservative justices seemed inclined to strike down a Black majority district in Louisiana.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said during oral arguments that race is “always a part of redistricting.” The Supreme Court is not expected to make its decision in this case for months.
