Louisiana v. Callais

Louisiana v. Callais Robinson v. Callais
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 24, 2025 Reargued October 15, 2025 Decided April 29, 2026
Full case name	Louisiana, Appellant v. Phillip Callais, et al. Press Robinson, et al., Appellants v. Phillip Callais, et al.
Docket nos.	24-109 24-110
Citations	608 U.S. ___ (more)
Decision	Opinion
Questions presented
1. Whether the majority erred in finding that race predominated in the Legislature's enactment of S.B. 8. 2. Whether the majority erred in finding that S.B. 8 fails strict scrutiny. 3. Whether the majority erred in subjecting S.B. 8 to the Gingles preconditions. 4. Whether the actions described in Questions 1–3 are justiciable. 5. Whether the State's intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Holding
Compliance with the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to use race as the basis for redistricting. No compelling State interest justified the use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Clarence Thomas · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan Neil Gorsuch · Brett Kavanaugh Amy Coney Barrett · Ketanji Brown Jackson
Case opinions
Majority	Alito, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett
Concurrence	Thomas, joined by Gorsuch
Dissent	Kagan, joined by Sotomayor, Jackson
Laws applied
Voting Rights Act of 1965 Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments

Louisiana v. Callais, consolidated with Robinson v. Callais, 608 U.S. ___ (2026), is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision concerning racial gerrymandering and redistricting in the state of Louisiana following the 2020 United States census. Though the case was first heard during the Supreme Court's 2024–2025 term, it was reargued in the following term on October 15, 2025, to address whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The Court, in a 6–3 decision along ideological lines, ruled that Louisiana's new redistricting map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Fifteenth Amendment.

While the majority declined to find Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, the Court established additional criteria for evaluating such claims beyond the framework of Thornburg v. Gingles 478 U.S. 30 (1986). Associate Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, held that plaintiffs in Section 2 challenges must demonstrate that a state intentionally redistricted to diminish the opportunity for minority voters. Absent such proof, the Court indicated that such challenges would be deemed nonjusticiable as a partisan gerrymander under the precedent of Rucho v. Common Cause 588 U.S. 684 (2019).

Background

Following the 2020 United States census, Louisiana was assigned six seats in the United States House of Representatives. The census found that about one-third of the people in the state were Black. The Louisiana State Legislature, where the Republican Party held a majority in both chambers, approved new maps that were largely unchanged from the previous decade, giving the state five districts with white majorities and one with a black majority.

Black voters challenged the new maps in court, alleging it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which prohibits racial discrimination in elections. In the ensuing case, Ardoin v. Robinson, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick ruled in June 2022 that the map violated the VRA and ordered the legislature to draw a new map including a second majority-Black district to reflect the census results. Louisiana's Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin sought a stay of the order from the Fifth Circuit, which was denied. Ardoin then sought relief from the Supreme Court, which stayed the order pending its decision in Allen v. Milligan, a similar redistricting case from Alabama.

In June 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Allen v. Milligan that Alabama's new redistricting map violated the VRA. Consequently, the Court lifted its stay of Dick's ruling, returning the case to the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit ordered the state legislature to pass a map compliant with the Allen decision by January 30, 2024, to ensure readiness for the 2024 general elections, or else Dick would draw up a new map. The state legislature held a special session in January 2024 and approved a new map, in which its 6th congressional district became the state's second majority-Black district.

After the new maps were issued, a group calling themselves "non-African-American voters" filed suit, claiming the districts were racially gerrymandered and violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Because this was a constitutional rather than a statutory challenge, the case was heard by a panel of three federal district judges from the Western District of Louisiana, rather than a single judge. In May 2024, the panel ruled 2–1 that the new map was unconstitutionally gerrymandered and blocked its use. The state sought a stay from the Supreme Court, arguing it was too close to the election to create a new map. The Supreme Court ordered the state to use the January 2024 map for the 2024 elections due to the timing, though it did not rule on the merits of the panel's decision.

Supreme Court

Two separate petitions were filed with the Supreme Court to hear the challenge on the district panel's ruling, one from the state itself (Louisiana v. Callais) and another from Black voters and civil rights organizations such as the NAACP (Robinson v. Callais). The Supreme Court granted certiorari to both cases and consolidated them in November 2024.

Initial oral arguments were held on March 24, 2025. On June 27, 2025, the Court ordered reargument for the 2025 term, with only Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting.

During the summer recess prior to the 2025 term, the Supreme Court directed all parties to submit supplemental briefs addressing whether the new maps violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Several news commentators said this move suggested the Court was weighing whether compliance with Section 2 of the VRA would be unconstitutional, further weakening the VRA. Among these briefs, Louisiana submitted a brief stating the State was no longer defending its position in the case at the Supreme Court, and instead argued to advance the claim that the new maps violated the 14th and 15th Amendments.

The second oral session for the case was heard on October 15, 2025. Court observers noted that the court's conservative majority appeared ready to limit the use of the VRA for redistricting, suggesting that the Act's mandates might have a time limit, an argument similar to the one used to end affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. While observers did not expect the Court to strike down Section 2 entirely, they suggested the conservative justices would increase the evidentiary burden for proving racial discrimination in redistricting.

According to some analysts, a decision reducing the scope of the VRA could allow Republicans to gain a significant number of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives from redistricting in the Southeast, where the VRA has generally prevented Republican-controlled legislatures from crafting racially gerrymandered districts. The New York Times estimates that weakening the VRA could shift up to 12 seats from Democratic to Republican control, potentially expanding the Republican House majority. The timing of the ruling would also be critical in relation to the 2026 general election. Some Republican-controlled states had already initiated mid-census partisan redistricting in mid-2025, such as Texas, backed by President Donald Trump to secure more Republican representatives in the House. Democratic-controlled states have proposed their own redistricting to counter these changes, such as the successful attempt in California with Proposition 50. In December 2025, the Supreme Court allowed the use of the Texas redistricting maps and subsequently rejected the Republicans' challenge to California's map in February 2026. In March 2026, the Court also blocked a lower court mandate to redraw a congressional district based in Staten Island following a challenge by Black voters in the district.

Decision

The court issued its decision on April 29, 2026. In a 6–3 decision split along ideological lines, the court affirmed the ruling of a federal district court panel that the state's new map was an illegal racial gerrymander. The majority opinion was written by Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Alito wrote: "Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context. Compliance with section 2 thus could not justify the state's use of race-based redistricting here. The state's attempt to satisfy the Middle District's ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."

The decision did not hold Section 2 of the VRA to be unconstitutional, but established that four major developments, since one of the last major tests of Section 2, Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), required additional considerations in evaluating Section 2 claims: the elimination of entrenched discrimination in the Southern states; the dominant two-party system where race and party affiliation are often tied together; the decision in Rucho v. Common Cause that partisan gerrymandering claims are non-justiciable in federal courts; and the ability of plaintiffs to employ computer modeling to show alternative redistricting plans that meet state goals with increased racial balance. Alito noted that without these considerations, plaintiffs in Section 2 cases were "dressing their political-gerrymandering claims in racial garb." He concluded that a successful challenger must now prove that a state "intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race." Failing to "disentangle race from the state's race-neutral considerations, including politics," will now likely lead to an unsuccessful suit.

On the right is a sample map of Louisiana under the Fair Representation Act showing a proportional representation map that does not use majority-minority districts, unlike the 2025 Louisiana's congressional district map that the court struck down. The multi-member districts have the ability to elect two Black representatives in the state.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court "should never have interpreted §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effectively give racial groups 'an entitlement to roughly proportional representation.'"

Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, stating: "The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today's decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter."

Multiple media outlets characterized this a landmark decision, suggesting the additional restrictions on Section 2 of the VRA will likely make it significantly more difficult to challenge redistricting. The decision is expected to allow southern states to eliminate majority-minority districts to favor the Republican party's representation in Congress. FairVote criticized the court's decision and called for "proportional, multi-member districts that give every community a seat at the table."

Aftermath

The Supreme Court's decision was issued amid efforts by several states to perform mid-decade redistricting. This movement was initially championed by President Donald Trump during his second term to push for Republican control of the House of Representatives, and was led by a new legislative map in Texas. States with Democratic majorities followed suit to offset these changes, typically by seeking voter approval for new maps, as seen with California's Proposition 50.

The timing of the decision was not expected to have a significant impact for the 2026 general election, as it was issued after multiple states had already begun the primary process; however, it was expected to influence the 2028 election as states would have sufficient time to implement new maps. Florida, for example, had already begun redistricting as part of the larger national effort to add more Republican districts prior to the ruling and their primaries. The state passed its new maps the day the decision was handed down.

Some states, however, indicated they will seek to suspend their 2026 primaries to institute maps reflecting the Callais decision. Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill announced the day after the decision that they were suspending the state's May 16 primary to allow the legislature to draw a new compliant map. This occurred despite that mail-in ballots already having been sent to overseas and early-voting residents.

Alabama, which had been required to include two majority-Black districts from the Supreme Court's decision in Allen v. Milligan (2023), filed an emergency motion with the court the day after the Callais ruling. The motion sought to stay an injunction placed by the District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, which had blocked the legislature's maps in favor of those constructed by a court-appointed special master. The district court had previously ruled that the legislature's maps remained racially gerrymandered and had ignored the Allen ruling. In its motion, the state argued that the Callais decision overrode the Allen ruling, justifying the use of legislature-drawn maps for the 2026 election even though early voting had already begun for the state primaries. Governor Kay Ivey also ordered a special session on May 1, 2026, to begin creating a new redistricting map concurrently with the emergency motion.

See also

• Thornburg v. Gingles
• 2025–2026 United States redistricting
• Gerrymandering in the United States
• Redistricting in the United States
• Democratic backsliding in the United States