Louisiana v. Callais

Majority — Alito

Joined by: Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett

The majority reasoned that the Constitution almost never permits racial discrimination by government, and only two interests have ever been found compelling enough to justify it: prison safety and remedying specific identified past discrimination. Because the Fifteenth Amendment itself only bars intentional discrimination, Congress's power to enforce it through Section 2 must be read to target intentional discrimination too, not mere statistical disparities, or else Congress would be improperly changing the right rather than enforcing it. The majority found that since Gingles was decided 40 years ago, conditions have changed dramatically—less discrimination, a real two-party system, the Rucho decision barring partisan gerrymandering suits, and powerful mapping software—making it easy for plaintiffs to exploit race-based claims to mask partisan disputes. It therefore updated the Gingles test to require plaintiffs to disentangle race from politics at every step, and concluded Louisiana's Robinson plaintiffs failed to show the state was constitutionally required to draw a second majority-Black district, so the map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Responding to the dissent's charge that this effectively imports an intent requirement, the majority insisted it only requires "a strong inference" of intentional discrimination arising from circumstances, not direct proof, and denied overruling Allen v. Milligan because that case did not involve a state defending its map on partisan grounds.

Dissent reasoning

Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, argued that Congress deliberately rejected an intent requirement when it amended Section 2 in 1982 to overturn Mobile v. Bolden, replacing it with a results-based test asking only whether minority voters have less opportunity to elect their preferred candidates. The dissent argued the majority's new "Callais requirements"—that plaintiffs' illustrative maps must be race-blind and match every state political goal, and that racial bloc voting evidence must control for party—will make Section 2 claims nearly impossible to win wherever race and party correlate, which is almost everywhere Section 2 currently applies, effectively reviving Bolden's discarded intent test. The dissent contended this violates statutory stare decisis, since the Court in Allen v. Milligan just three years earlier reaffirmed the Gingles framework with "superpowered" precedential force and rejected similar arguments from Alabama. Kagan warned the ruling could unravel Louisiana's older majority-Black district and similar districts nationwide, producing the largest reduction in minority representation since Reconstruction, and framed the decision as the final step in a series of rulings (Shelby County, Brnovich) dismantling the Voting Rights Act's protections.