The Justice Department implored the Supreme Court to strike down race-based redistricting as the justices are slated to hear oral arguments in the coming weeks on whether Louisiana’s creation of a second black-majority district was unconstitutional.

The DOJ, in a brief to the high court, argued that Louisiana’s creation of the second black-majority district, created to comply with a different court order, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The department also called on the high court to strike down its 1986 ruling in Thornburg v. Gingles, which set the current parameters for legal challenges of congressional maps under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Recommended Stories

• Advocates warn Colorado 'conversion therapy' ban in Supreme Court case is 'blatant censorship'
• Supreme Court sitting on four emergency requests from the Trump administration
• Supreme Court to hear FTC firing lawsuit teeing up challenge to 90-year-old precedent

“Properly construed, Section 2’s ‘results’ test should never have compelled race-predominant districting. But that has been the consequence of misguided applications of the vague framework for vote-dilution claims established in Thornburg v. Gingles,” the brief said. “This Court should modify that judge-made framework to address the constitutional problems that it has created.”

The high court will hear rearguments in Louisiana v. Callais on Oct. 15, less than four months after the justices punted on a decision in the case following an initial round of oral arguments this year. With the second round of arguments, the Supreme Court asked parties to answer whether Louisiana’s “intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

The case centers on Louisiana’s congressional map, which has faced lawsuits since the original map was passed into law earlier this decade. The GOP-dominated legislature originally passed a map that was split 5-1 between Republican and Democratic seats, with the lone Democratic seat being a black-majority district in compliance with Section 2. The state was sued for violating Section 2, alleging that the black population was large enough that under the law and the Gingles framework, a second black-majority district should be created.

After that lawsuit against the state prevailed, the legislature passed a new congressional map that included a second black-majority district, creating a 4-2 split map between Republican and Democratic seats. The new map led to another lawsuit from a group of voters, who claimed that creating the second black majority district amounted to an unconstitutional gerrymander.

When the Supreme Court asked for briefs on the narrow constitutional question in August, Louisiana declined to defend the maps, arguing the current Section 2 framework under Gingles should be struck down. The Justice Department joined that stance, arguing that the Gingles framework has been used for political purposes, rather than concerns about racial discrimination in the redistricting process.

“In short, this Court’s Section 2 jurisprudence should account for the fact that, today, a State’s failure to create a compact majority-minority district, even where demographically possible, is far more likely to reflect political motives than racial ones. Too often, Section 2 is deployed as a form of electoral race-based affirmative action to undo a State’s constitutional pursuit of political ends. That misuse of Section 2 is unconstitutional,” the DOJ’s brief said.

The Supreme Court’s ruling on the case could have sweeping implications for congressional maps in various southern states where Section 2-compliant districts have been created by legislatures or court order under the Gingles precedent.

SUPREME COURT POISED TO SHAKE UP MIDTERM ELECTIONS

The high court’s upcoming term begins Oct. 6, with oral arguments in various key cases, including the Louisiana case, in the opening oral argument sessions in October and November. Other key cases the justices will hear include a dispute over Colorado’s “conversion therapy” ban, in which a state-licensed counselor from the Centennial State is arguing the sweeping law violates First Amendment free speech rights.

The Supreme Court will issue opinions for the cases it hears in the upcoming term in the months following oral arguments, through the end of June 2026.