The Voting Rights Act, narrowed in two acts

This week, two state and federal courts changed the legal architecture of American redistricting. The order of events matters.

April 29: Louisiana v. Callais

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Louisiana’s 2024 congressional map — drawn under federal court order to remedy a Section 2 vote-dilution finding by creating a second majority-Black district — was itself an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Justice Alito wrote for a six-justice majority joined by the Chief Justice, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Justice Kagan dissented for the three-justice minority.

The substantive holding does more than decide a single redistricting fight. It rewrites the Thornburg v. Gingles framework that has governed Section 2 vote-dilution claims since 1986.

Three changes are load-bearing:

1. The first Gingles precondition is sharpened. Plaintiffs must now produce an “illustrative map” that “fully achieves all the State’s legitimate goals” while creating the additional minority-opportunity district. Modern computer-aided mapmaking, the majority reasoned, makes this a stricter test than it was in 1986.

2. Plaintiffs must control for partisanship. Under the second and third preconditions (cohesive minority voting and white-bloc voting that defeats minority-preferred candidates), plaintiffs must now show racially polarized voting that cannot be explained by partisanship. In the South, where race and party correlate strongly, this requirement is expected to defeat most claims.

3. The “totality of circumstances” inquiry now turns on present-day intentional discrimination. The historical and structural evidence that has long supported Section 2 claims — patterns of socioeconomic inequality, official discrimination, racial appeals in campaigns — gets discounted in favor of evidence of current intentional racial discrimination, a much higher bar.

Justice Kagan’s dissent was direct: the decision “renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.” She framed Callais as the third case in a trilogy with Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which gutted Section 5 preclearance, and Brnovich v. DNC (2021), which narrowed Section 2’s vote-denial prong. Allen v. Milligan (2023) had reaffirmed Gingles and required Alabama to draw an additional majority-Black district; Callais effectively reverses that practical outcome by rewriting the preconditions so that the same evidence that won in Milligan would likely lose today.

May 4: the immediate-effect order

Five days later, the Court took an unusual procedural step. Louisiana asked the Court to bypass the standard 32-day rehearing window and issue its mandate immediately, so the state could redraw its map before its scheduled May 16 congressional primary. The Court granted the request.

Justice Jackson dissented, noting more than 100,000 Louisiana voters had already cast early ballots. The decision to give the ruling immediate effect, she wrote, had “a strong political undercurrent.” Justice Alito issued a five-paragraph concurrence calling Jackson’s charge “baseless and insulting” and “groundless and utterly irresponsible.”

The personal exchange aside, the procedural maneuver matters. It signals to other states that the Court is willing to clear procedural pathways for Callais to reach 2026 maps quickly.

May 6-8: Alabama moves

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed motions on May 6 (district court) and May 8 (Supreme Court) asking that the Allen v. Milligan injunction — which had required Alabama to draw an additional majority-Black district — be lifted in light of Callais. Justice Thomas ordered plaintiffs’ response by May 11. Alabama is asking for a decision by May 14. Tennessee, Mississippi, and other states are reportedly evaluating mid-decade re-redistricting.

President Trump has predicted Republicans could net up to 20 additional House seats from the ruling. Whether the prediction proves accurate depends on how aggressively states act in the months remaining before the November midterms — and on whether federal courts are willing to bless rapid mid-cycle changes.

May 8: the Virginia Supreme Court rules

One week after Callais, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled 4-3 in Scott v. McDougle to void the redistricting amendment that Virginia voters had approved 52-48 on April 21. The amendment would have authorized a mid-decade redraw of Virginia’s congressional districts; the legislature’s accompanying map would have shifted Virginia’s delegation from a 6-5 Democratic edge toward roughly 10-1.

Justice Kelsey wrote the majority. The holding rests on a procedural reading of Article XII, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution, which requires a constitutional amendment to be passed by two successive General Assemblies with an “intervening election” of the House of Delegates. The Virginia Legislature first passed the measure in October 2025 — but more than 1.3 million Virginians had already cast early-voting ballots in the November 2025 House elections by then. The majority held that “general election” in Article XII includes the early-voting period, not just Election Day, and that the timing defect “irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote.”

Chief Justice Powell dissented, joined by Justices Mann and Fulton. The dissent argued that the General Assembly had codified “general election” in 1970 as a single day, and that the majority was rewriting both statute and longstanding practice.

Attorney General Jay Jones (D) is filing for an emergency stay and signaling appeal to the US Supreme Court on Elections Clause grounds. Most observers see a narrow federal pathway because the ruling rests on state-constitutional procedure.

What both rulings produce, together

The federal lever for challenging racially discriminatory maps is now substantially narrowed. The Voting Rights Act’s Section 2, which has been the operative statutory tool since 1982, will be much harder to win. Shelby County removed preclearance. Brnovich narrowed vote-denial. Callais narrows vote-dilution. What’s left of the federal voting-rights statute is, on the most plausible reading of the Court’s recent direction, primarily an instrument for plaintiffs in narrow, well-documented intentional-discrimination cases.

The state lever is uneven. Some state supreme courts have been receptive to state-constitutional theories of partisan gerrymandering — Pennsylvania, North Carolina (briefly), New York, Wisconsin (recently). Virginia’s Scott v. McDougle ruling, on the substance, doesn’t address gerrymandering at all; it addresses procedural amendment requirements. The map it preserves was drawn before the partisan-pressure cycle began. Whether that result satisfies anyone politically is a separate question from what it means doctrinally.

The legislative lever — the Freedom to Vote Act, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — has been stalled in the Senate for multiple sessions. It is, as Representative James Clyburn put it after Callais, “our only hope” for federal action. The political conditions under which it advances have not visibly improved.

What to watch

• Alabama’s emergency motions. Justice Thomas has ordered plaintiff response by May 11. A SCOTUS ruling could come within days.
• The Louisiana May 16 primary delay. State officials have postponed the congressional primary while the redrawn map is finalized.
• Mid-decade redistricting in Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, and other states. Several have already begun preliminary work.
• Democratic counter-maps in California, New York, Maryland, Illinois, and Minnesota. Some have advanced through state legislatures; some face state-constitutional or referendum challenges similar to Virginia’s.
• Virginia’s federal appeal. Whether the US Supreme Court takes the case on Elections Clause grounds will signal how aggressively it intends to police state-constitutional redistricting outcomes.

The voting-rights legal architecture that took 60 years to build is being reshaped over a span of weeks. The remaining question is whether the political institutions designed to defend it can match the pace of the change.