The Court’s Callais v. Louisiana ruling strips away a core protection of the Voting Rights Act, leaving minority voters with diminished power to elect candidates of their choice.
In a 6-3 decision in Callais v. Louisiana on Wednesday, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s current congressional map—drawn after the 2020 census to include a second majority-Black district—and, in doing so, weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining nationwide tool for challenging racially discriminatory voting laws.
At the center of the case was a straightforward but high-stakes question: Was Louisiana required to create a second Black-majority congressional district to give Black voters a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choice? Or was drawing such a district itself unconstitutional?
Louisiana and its allies argued the map was a necessary remedy for vote dilution, backed by civil rights organizations including the Lawyers’ Committee, League of Women Voters, the Brennan Center, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Women’s Law Center, the National Urban League and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
The challengers, by contrast, claimed the map relied too heavily on race in drawing district lines and therefore violated the Constitution.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito sided with the challengers—continuing what voting rights advocates describe as a yearslong dismantling of the Voting Rights Act. The law has been repeatedly narrowed by the courts, most notably in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted federal preclearance protections in 2013 and opened the door to a wave of restrictive state laws. Today’s ruling further erodes Section 2, which has long allowed voters to challenge electoral maps with discriminatory effects.
The decision at the heart of the Callais ruling—that Louisiana’s use of race to create a second majority-Black district was unconstitutional—goes hand-in-hand with the Court’s 2019 ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause, that partisan gerrymandering claims are beyond the reach of federal courts. With this latest ruling, all gerrymandering is more or less constitutional.
The Court’s decision to weaken Section 2 will kick off a chain reaction in the states, who will each begin to redraw their voting maps: Mississippi for certain, according to their governor, with others expected to follow suit.
“Over the years, the Roberts Court has chipped away at the legal levee holding back a gerrymandering deluge,” writes Democracy Docket’s Jim Saksa. “With today’s decision, that dam will now completely burst, ushering in a new era of elected politicians picking their voters instead of voters picking their politicians.”
Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued a forceful dissent. Kagan underscored its urgency by reading portions of it aloud from the bench—a rare move signaling deep disagreement—and omitting the customary word “respectfully,” a subtle but telling break from tradition that reflects the gravity of the moment.
Below, we’ve pulled the most powerful lines from her 47-page dissent, followed by the full text. Read, share your favorite line, and help lift up a dissent that refuses to mince words about what’s at stake.
“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power.”
“The majority claims only to be ‘updating’ our Section 2 law, as though through a few technical tweaks. … But in fact, those ‘updates’ eviscerate the law.”
“For over a decade, this Court has had its sights set on the Voting Rights Act.”
“The Voting Rights Act … was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. … Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court.”
“Members of the racial minority can still go to the polls and cast a ballot. But given the State’s racially polarized voting, they cannot hope—in the way the State’s white citizens can—to elect a person whom they think will well represent their interests.”
“… States could be unremitting and ingenious in resisting African American enfranchisement. Protecting minority voting was like ‘battling a Hydra’: ‘Whenever one form of discrimination was prohibited, another sprang up in its place.’ …
“[The Voting Rights Act] ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality.”
“In many places, racial polarization in voting is expressed through party preference. To remove that factor is to strip the evidence of its meaning.”
“Poll taxes, literacy tests, ‘good character’ exams, property qualifications, convoluted registration processes—all these and more, when combined with administrative discretion, effectively suppressed the Black vote while leaving white voters largely unaffected.
“Congress could have acted. The 15th Amendment gave it the power to enforce voting rights ‘by appropriate legislation.’ But for decades it sat silent while race-neutral rules ‘rendered the right to vote illusory’ for Black Americans.”
“The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. … Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter. In the States where that law continues to matter—the States still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting—minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process.”
“Under cover of ‘updat[ing]’ and ‘realign[ing]’ this greatest of statutes, the majority makes a nullity of Section 2 and threatens a half-century’s worth of gains in voting equality.”
“… the right to vote is not measured by formal access alone. It includes the opportunity to participate equally in the political process. Congress recognized that principle when it amended Section 2. The majority abandons it.”
Below is the dissent, lightly edited for Ms. house style and for clarity.
JUSTICE KAGAN, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.
Consider the story of a hypothetical congressional district in a hypothetical State, subjected to a redistricting scheme. The example is admittedly stylized, but in its essence simulates the dispute before us and clarifies the immense issues at stake.
The district, let’s say, is a single county, in the shape of a near-perfect circle, sitting in the middle of a rectangular State. The State is one with a long history of virulent racial discrimination, and its many effects, including in residential segregation and political division, remain significant even today. The population of the circle district is 90 percent Black; the rest of the State, divided into five surrounding districts, is 90 percent white.
And voting throughout all those districts is racially polarized: Black residents vote heavily for Democratic candidates, while white residents vote heavily for Republicans. The circle district thus enables the State’s Black community to elect a representative of its choice, whom no neighboring community would put in office.
But that arrangement, in this not-so-hypothetical, is not to last. The state legislature decides to eliminate the circle district, slicing it into six pie pieces and allocating one each to six new, still solidly white congressional districts. The State’s Black voters are now widely dispersed, and—unlike the State’s White voters—lack any ability to elect a representative of their choice.
Election after election, Black citizens’ votes are, by every practical measure, wasted.
That is racial vote dilution in its most classic form. A minority community that is cohesive in its geography and politics alike, and that faces continued adversity from racial division, is split—“cracked” is the usual term—so that it loses all its electoral influence. Members of the racial minority can still go to the polls and cast a ballot. But given the State’s racially polarized voting, they cannot hope—in the way the State’s white citizens can—to elect a person whom they think will well represent their interests.
Their votes matter less than others’ do; they translate into less political voice. Or, as this Court recently put it in Allen v. Milligan, the cracking makes “a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority voter.”
And because that is so, Congress in the Voting Rights Act made the practice illegal. Section 2 of that Act guarantees that members of every racial group have an equal “opportunity” to “elect representatives of their choice.”
That promise arose from a far-too-prominent part of this Nation’s history. Even after the 15th Amendment banned racial discrimination in voting, state officials routinely deprived African Americans of their voting rights. Through a seemingly boundless array of mechanisms—most of them facially race-neutral and among them the drawing of district lines—States either prevented Black citizens from casting ballots or ensured that their votes would count for next to nothing.
The Voting Rights Act was meant as the corrective. And when this Court construed it too narrowly—insisting that a person suing under Section 2 had to prove discriminatory intent—Congress amended the law so that it turned solely on discriminatory effects.
Under that revised version, a person has a valid Section 2 claim if the challenged state action, in the “totality of circumstances,” “results in” an electoral system “not equally open” to members of his racial group—meaning a system giving those citizens “less opportunity” to “participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”
And for 40 years now, this Court has recognized that language to encompass districting decisions that result in vote dilution—the “minimizing” of minority voters’ “ability to elect their preferred candidates,” as described in Thornburg v. Gingles.
But no longer.
Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power.
Of course, the majority does not announce today’s holding that way. Its opinion is understated, even antiseptic. The majority claims only to be “updating” our Section 2 law, as though through a few technical tweaks.
But in fact, those “updates” eviscerate the law, so that it will not remedy even the classic example of vote dilution given above.
Without a basis in Section 2’s text or the Constitution, the majority formulates new proof requirements for plaintiffs alleging vote dilution. Those demands, meant to “disentangle race from politics,” leverage two features of modern political life: that racial identity and party preference are often linked, and that politicians have free rein to adopt partisan gerrymanders.
The first fact—that in a given area, Black voters mainly support Democrats and White voters Republicans—was viewed before today as practically an element of a vote-dilution claim, because it indicates that a minority group is politically cohesive enough to elect a preferred representative but will be outvoted by the majority bloc.
The second fact—the result of a prior mistake by this Court—is something every day to regret, not to use as an excuse for stripping minority citizens of their voting rights.
But under the majority’s new test, when those two facts coexist—which is almost everywhere Section 2 still has force—a plaintiff cannot prevail by showing that a redistricting resulted in the dilution of minority voting power.
Rather, a plaintiff will have to show—contrary to Section 2’s clear text and design—that the legislators were “motivated by a discriminatory purpose.”
And that, as Section 2’s drafters knew, is nearly impossible.
Today’s ruling is part of a set. For over a decade, this Court has had its sights set on the Voting Rights Act.
In Shelby County v. Holder, the Court made a nullity of Section 5, the provision of the Act enabling the Department of Justice to review and block new voting rules in jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression.
Congress had recently, and after lengthy study, reauthorized that preclearance mechanism. It found the scheme still essential to counter the constantly evolving techniques States can use to prevent minorities from exercising their fair share of political influence.
But this Court thought it knew better.
Not surprisingly, a flood of discriminatory voting laws followed, and now only Section 2 stood in the gap.
In Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Court did half what was needed to dismantle that section as well. Section 2 prohibits not only vote-diluting districting plans, but also discriminatory burdens on the casting of ballots. In a suit involving the latter type of law, the Court invented a new legal standard making Section 2 useless, on the theory that the statute as written was too “radical.”
Since the Court ruled, not a single Section 2 suit has successfully challenged such a restriction on voting, however discriminatory in operation.
And finally, today, the last piece—Section 2 as applied to redistricting.
Just three Terms ago, in Allen v. Milligan, the Court upheld a vote-dilution challenge to a districting map in a case much like this one, preserving Section 2 as a tool to prevent racially discriminatory redistricting.
Nothing has changed in the three years since.
Yet today, the majority does “revise and reformulate”—and destroy.
It avails itself again of the tools used before to dismantle the Act: untenable readings of statutory text, made-up and impossible-to-meet evidentiary requirements, disregard for precedent and disdain for congressional judgment.
And in that way it greenlights redistricting plans that will disable minority communities across the Nation from electing “representatives of their choice.”
The majority tells us that the inability to make out a Section 2 claim will just be a mark of the Nation’s progress, and therefore “cause for celebration.”
I dissent.
The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—”one of the most consequential, efficacious and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history.”
It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly and overwhelmingly reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress.
Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the members of this Court.
I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.
I begin with some history—both with what led originally to the Voting Rights Act and with how the current Section 2 came to be. The point is not to deliver a eulogy for the law—though, in truth, the Court’s step-by-step slaying of voting rights now makes one appropriate. Rather, the object is to reveal how far today’s decision repudiates past, and rightfully still controlling, congressional choices.
As I will later explain, the majority now demands that vote-dilution plaintiffs muster proof of racially discriminatory motive. In that way, the decision echoes an earlier one of this Court, which also held that Section 2 should function as an intent test in City of Mobile v. Bolden. But Congress amended Section 2 to reject that view. In light of the way voting discrimination had operated since the 15th Amendment’s adoption, Congress instead drafted Section 2 to bar the use of any electoral mechanism that would result in minority citizens having less opportunity than non-minority citizens to choose their political representatives.
In the wake of the Civil War, Congress enacted and the States ratified the 15th Amendment to ensure the enfranchisement of Black Americans. Nearly 200,000 Black men had fought in the Union cause. And millions more African Americans had just become citizens, giving them a claim on political rights.
The 15th Amendment responded with a clarion promise of racial equality in voting: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.”
The Amendment’s passage was a momentous occasion. It appeared to affirm that a mere few years after slavery’s end, African Americans had become “equal members of the body politic.” President Grant called the Amendment “the most important event that had occurred since the nation came to life.” Black Americans similarly referred to the Amendment as the Nation’s “second birth.”
But all the celebration was many years premature. “In the century that followed,” the 15th Amendment “proved little more than a parchment promise.”
Violence and intimidation were ever-present ways to deny Black citizens their right to vote. But often force was not needed, because state laws could accomplish that goal. Especially in the South, States soon put in place a host of facially race-neutral devices to systematically disenfranchise African American citizens. Poll taxes, literacy tests, “good character” exams, property qualifications, convoluted registration processes—all these and more, when combined with administrative discretion, effectively suppressed the Black vote while leaving white voters largely unaffected.
Congress could have acted. The 15th Amendment gave it the power to enforce voting rights “by appropriate legislation.” But for decades it sat silent while race-neutral rules “rendered the right to vote illusory” for Black Americans.
Louisiana’s post-Reconstruction rules provide a stark example. In less than a decade, the number of Black registered voters dropped from 130,000 to just over 1,000. The numbers did not begin to climb again until the end of World War II, and even then only slowly.
Congress’ initial efforts to counter voting discrimination—in the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960 and 1964—did little but prove the difficulty of the task. Each statute authorized the Attorney General “to seek injunctions against interference with the right to vote on racial grounds.” But time and again, States found ways to evade those court orders. They simply “switched to new discriminatory devices not covered by” the rulings.
Congress thus learned that States could be unremitting and ingenious in resisting African American enfranchisement. Protecting minority voting was like “battling a Hydra”: “Whenever one form of discrimination was prohibited, another sprang up in its place.”
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented Congress’ most determined effort to stop that cycle. Selma’s Bloody Sunday galvanized the nation to confront racial disenfranchisement.
Congress enacted a double-barreled approach to enforce the 15th Amendment. Section 5 required jurisdictions with a history of suppression to obtain federal approval before implementing new voting rules. Section 2 provided nationwide judicial protection, prohibiting any voting practice that would “deny or abridge” the right to vote on account of race.
Taken together, Congress believed these mechanisms could finally “banish racial discrimination in voting.”
After the Act’s passage—and partly because of its success—discriminatory tactics increasingly shifted toward vote dilution. As more Black citizens registered and voted, States turned to methods that would dilute their political power rather than prevent them from voting outright.
One method was at-large voting, where citywide elections could ensure that minority voters were consistently outvoted. Another was manipulating district lines.
Minority communities could be “packed,” crammed into a single district when they could have influenced multiple. Or they could be “cracked,” split across districts so they could not form a majority anywhere.
In either case, a minority citizen’s vote carried less weight than it otherwise would.
This Court recognized early on that such practices could be unlawful because of their effects. In White v. Regester, the Court held that vote dilution existed when a “political process” was “not equally open to participation” by a racial group, so that its members had less opportunity to participate and to elect representatives of their choice.
Importantly, the Court did not require proof of discriminatory intent. Instead, it looked at the “totality of circumstances”—how the system operated in light of historical and social conditions.
That analysis considered a State’s history of discrimination, “racial campaign tactics,” and the lingering effects of inequality in areas like education, employment and housing. It also looked at political outcomes, such as whether minority candidates were consistently defeated.
When those factors were combined, the Court could determine whether minority voters had equal access to the political process.
But just seven years later, the Court reversed course.
In City of Mobile v. Bolden, the Court required plaintiffs to prove discriminatory intent. It held that Section 2 merely restated the 15th Amendment’s ban on intentional discrimination. Because the plaintiffs could not prove motive, their claim failed—even though their preferred candidates never won.
Bolden triggered widespread criticism. It was seen as a major setback for civil rights, because it made vote-dilution claims nearly impossible to win.
The problem was clear: Focusing on intent rather than effects would defeat valid claims, because discriminatory intent is notoriously difficult to prove. Legislatures rarely announce such motives openly.
As a result, vote-dilution litigation came to a near standstill. The Department of Justice abandoned cases it had planned to bring, and private lawsuits sharply declined.
States could once again make minority votes meaningless without violating the law.
But Congress intervened.
To reverse Bolden, Congress amended Section 2. It replaced language focused on denying or abridging voting rights with language covering practices that “result in a denial or abridgment.”
More importantly, Congress added language clarifying how to determine when a violation occurs. A violation exists if, under the “totality of circumstances,” the political process is not equally open to participation by members of a racial group, meaning they have less opportunity than others to participate and to elect representatives of their choice.
This amendment adopted the effects-based approach of White and rejected Bolden’s intent requirement.
Congress made clear that the right question was not whether lawmakers acted with discriminatory intent, but whether minority voters had equal access to the political process.
Courts were instructed to “assess the impact” of electoral practices using “objective factors” to determine whether they “minimized or canceled out” minority voting strength.
Congress also emphasized that it had the constitutional authority to adopt this approach. The 15th Amendment gives “Congress broad power” to enact legislation protecting voting rights, including laws that address discriminatory effects, not just intentional discrimination.
Congress understood that race-neutral rules could still perpetuate inequality and that proving intent was often impossible. So it chose an effects test to ensure meaningful protection.
In doing so, Congress made a deliberate and considered choice: Section 2 would turn on results.
It would ask whether minority voters had “less opportunity” than others to participate in politics and “elect representatives of their choice.”
There is a way to decide this case consistent with that choice, and a way not.
In the next part, I explain how this Court’s precedents would address the vote-dilution claim here—and how today’s majority departs from them.
II
This Court first construed the amended Section 2 in Thornburg v. Gingles, establishing there a framework—like the new statute itself—based on White. That framework has governed vote-dilution claims for the last four decades. And indeed, just three years ago, in Allen v. Milligan, we unequivocally reaffirmed it when sustaining a vote-dilution challenge to an Alabama redistricting scheme.
Had we proceeded along the same road today, we would have treated the vote-dilution challenge to Louisiana’s scheme in the same way.
“Gingles began by describing what Section 2 guards against.” “The essence of a Section 2 claim” is that an electoral rule or practice “interacts with social and historical conditions”—generally caused by past intentional discrimination—”to cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by Black and white voters.”
Such an inequality exists when the challenged rule “operates to minimize or cancel out minority voters’ ability to elect their preferred candidates.” And the risk of that dilution is greatest when minority and majority voters consistently prefer different candidates and the minority voters are submerged in a majority population that “regularly defeats their choices.”
To address that issue, Gingles requires a plaintiff to satisfy three “preconditions.”
First, the minority group must be “sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district”—one that follows “traditional districting criteria.”
Second, the group must be “politically cohesive,” meaning its members generally vote for the same candidates.
Third, the majority must “vote as a bloc in a way that usually defeats the minority’s preferred candidates.”
These factors serve a gatekeeping function. They ensure that a vote-dilution claim proceeds only when minority voters could elect a representative of their choice in a reasonably drawn district but cannot do so under the challenged plan because of racially polarized voting.
That threshold test is not easily met. Plaintiffs must present alternative maps that comply with traditional criteria such as compactness and contiguity. They must also provide statistical evidence showing racial bloc voting.
Only strong claims survive this stage.
Beyond those preconditions lies the “totality of circumstances” inquiry written into Section 2 itself. To determine whether the political process is “equally open,” courts must conduct “an intensely local appraisal” of how the challenged rule operates against the backdrop of past and present realities.
That inquiry considers factors such as a State’s history of discrimination, racial appeals in campaigns, and the success or failure of minority candidates. It also looks at how past discrimination continues to affect participation in the political process.
At the same time, courts may consider the “State’s interests in maintaining” a given electoral practice.Taken together, these requirements ensure that Section 2 functions as Congress intended: to identify situations where minority voters are denied equal opportunity in practice, not merely in theory.
For decades, this framework governed Section 2 cases across the country. And under that framework, the cracked-circle hypothetical I described earlier represents a paradigmatic violation.
The minority community is large and compact enough to form a district. Voting is racially polarized. And once the district is dismantled, minority voters lose the ability to elect their preferred candidates.
Under the “totality of circumstances”—including the State’s history of discrimination—that scheme would violate Section 2. The Louisiana case before us is not meaningfully different.
After the 2020 census, Louisiana drew a map with one majority-Black district and five majority-white districts, even though Black residents make up about one-third of the State’s population.
Plaintiffs argued that a second majority-Black district could be drawn in a way that satisfied traditional districting principles. Without it, Black voters would be dispersed across districts where their preferences would be consistently defeated.
After reviewing extensive evidence, the District Court agreed. It found that plaintiffs’ proposed district was reasonably configured and that racially polarized voting would otherwise prevent Black voters from electing their preferred candidates.
The court also concluded that, under the “totality of circumstances”—including Louisiana’s long history of discrimination—Black voters lacked equal opportunity in the political process.
Accordingly, the court ordered the State to redraw its map. That decision faithfully applied Gingles and Section 2.
The majority today does the opposite. Under the guise of “updating” the Gingles framework, it transforms it.
At every stage of the analysis, the majority imposes new requirements designed to achieve a single goal: to convert Section 2 from an effects-based test into a purpose-based test.
Congress rejected that approach when it amended Section 2. The majority now reinstates it.
Under the Court’s new framework, plaintiffs must do more than show that a districting plan dilutes minority voting power. They must also prove that the State acted with discriminatory intent.
That requirement, as Congress understood, is extraordinarily difficult to meet. The majority begins by redefining the first Gingles precondition. Previously, that requirement asked whether a minority community could form a reasonably configured majority district.
Now, the majority insists that plaintiffs must also show that their alternative maps achieve the State’s political goals as well as the State’s own map.
Those goals may include partisan objectives—such as ensuring a certain number of seats for one party—or protecting incumbents. This change has sweeping consequences.
In the cracked-circle example, a State could justify dismantling a majority-Black district by claiming it wanted to create safe districts for one political party.
Because race and party preference are often correlated, it may be impossible to draw a map that both preserves the minority district and satisfies that partisan goal.
Under the majority’s rule, the claim would fail at the outset—even though minority voters have been deprived of any meaningful opportunity to elect their preferred representatives. The same logic applies in real-world cases.
A State need only assert a political objective, and plaintiffs must produce a map that achieves that objective just as well while also preserving minority voting power.
In many cases, that cannot be done. The result is that valid vote-dilution claims will never reach the merits. The majority’s changes do not stop there.
It also alters the second and third Gingles preconditions by requiring plaintiffs to control for party affiliation in showing racially polarized voting. That requirement ignores reality.
In many places, racial polarization in voting is expressed through party preference. To remove that factor is to strip the evidence of its meaning.
Once again, the majority justifies this move by focusing on intent—suggesting that courts must distinguish between racial and political motives. But Section 2 does not turn on intent.
Congress chose an effects-based test precisely because intent is difficult to prove and often hidden.
Finally, the majority reshapes the “totality of circumstances” inquiry.
Instead of considering a wide range of factors, it narrows the analysis to focus almost entirely on whether there is evidence of intentional discrimination. That approach contradicts both the text of Section 2 and this Court’s precedents.
The statute calls for an assessment of all relevant circumstances, including the ongoing effects of past discrimination. The majority reduces that inquiry to a single question about motive.
The result is predictable. Under the new framework, the Louisiana plaintiffs fail at every stage. Their proposed map does not satisfy the State’s political goals. Their evidence of polarized voting does not isolate race from party. And they cannot prove discriminatory intent.
The majority overturns the District Court’s careful analysis in just a few paragraphs. Once the rules are rewritten this way, the outcome is inevitable. And the implications extend far beyond this case.
If a State can justify dismantling a majority-minority district by pointing to political objectives, then such districts will exist only at the State’s discretion.
Over time, many of the districts created under the Voting Rights Act may disappear. The majority’s new framework thus threatens to undo decades of progress in minority representation.
It does so while claiming merely to update the law.
In reality, it transforms it.
III
There is only one special burden appropriate to deciding this case. And it is not the one the majority imposes on vote-dilution plaintiffs to disentangle state motives.
Rather, it is the well-settled burden this Court must meet before overturning precedent about the meaning of a statute.
Our law is clear. Stare decisis—the principle that “today’s Court should stand by yesterday’s decisions”—carries enhanced force when the decision in question “interprets a statute.” That is because Congress can always amend a statute if it disagrees with the Court’s interpretation.
When this Court has said what a statute means—and Congress has not changed it—a particularly strong form of stare decisis applies. Overturning such precedent requires an especially strong justification.
Just three Terms ago, this Court invoked that principle in Allen v. Milligan.
In that case, Alabama urged the Court to reinterpret the Gingles framework in a way that would make vote-dilution claims harder to win. The Court rejected that argument, explaining that Congress is aware of how Section 2 has been interpreted and can change it if it chooses.
Until it does, the Court said, we must stay the course. But today, the majority abandons that approach. It does not even seriously engage with the principle of statutory stare decisis.
That omission is striking.
Allen did more than apply Gingles. It reaffirmed the framework on both precedential and substantive grounds. It traced the history of Section 2, explained how Gingles implements Congress’ choices and confirmed that the framework remains valid today.
Yet the majority dismisses that decision as if it were irrelevant. It is not.
To justify overturning such precedent, the majority would need a compelling reason. It has none.
The majority’s textual analysis does not support its conclusion. Section 2 guarantees minority voters an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.
The majority reframes that guarantee. It suggests that minority voters are entitled only to whatever opportunity results from the State’s chosen districting criteria. That interpretation cannot be squared with the statute’s language.
Section 2 focuses on results—on whether minority voters have less opportunity than others. It does not condition that inquiry on the State’s motives or justifications.
Congress understood that race-neutral rules could produce discriminatory outcomes. That is why it adopted an effects-based test. The majority’s interpretation ignores that choice. Nor does the Constitution require the majority’s approach.
The 15th Amendment prohibits intentional discrimination, but it also gives Congress broad power to enforce its guarantees.
This Court has long recognized that Congress may enact laws addressing discriminatory effects, not just intentional discrimination.
In upholding the Voting Rights Act, the Court has repeatedly affirmed that Congress may prohibit practices that result in unequal voting opportunities, even if they are facially neutral. That principle applies here.
Section 2’s effects-based framework is a valid exercise of Congress’s enforcement power. The majority suggests otherwise, but offers no convincing basis for doing so.
It also points to changes in the nation’s political landscape. It notes increases in minority voter registration and representation, particularly in the South.
Those developments are real and important. But they do not justify rewriting the statute. Congress, not this Court, is responsible for determining whether the Voting Rights Act remains necessary. And Section 2 is designed to account for change.
It applies only when current practices result in unequal opportunities. As conditions improve, fewer claims will succeed. That built-in flexibility undermines the majority’s argument that the statute has become outdated. The majority also emphasizes the rise of partisan polarization.
It argues that because race and party are often correlated, courts must distinguish between racial and political motives. But Congress was aware of that reality when it amended Section 2. It chose to focus on results nonetheless.
The majority’s approach does not preserve that choice. It overrides it.
Finally, the majority invokes this Court’s decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, which held that partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in federal court. From that premise, the majority concludes that Section 2 must be limited to avoid interfering with partisan districting. That reasoning is deeply flawed.
Rucho did not endorse partisan gerrymandering. It acknowledged that such practices are incompatible with democratic principles but concluded that federal courts lack a manageable standard to address them.
Nothing in that decision suggests that Congress must tolerate racial vote dilution in order to protect partisan line-drawing. Yet that is the effect of the majority’s ruling.
By allowing States to justify districting decisions on partisan grounds, the Court effectively insulates practices that diminish minority voting power.
Congress enacted Section 2 to prevent exactly that outcome. The majority undoes that work.
Congress amended Section 2 to reject this Court’s decision in Bolden and to ensure that minority voters would be protected against practices that dilute their voting strength.
It chose an effects-based test because it understood that discriminatory intent is difficult to prove and often concealed. This Court, in decisions from Gingles through Allen, honored that choice. Today’s decision does not.
By transforming Section 2 into a purpose-based test, the majority strips the statute of its force. States may now adopt districting plans that diminish minority voting power so long as they can point to some race-neutral justification.
In practice, that means many such plans will go unchallenged. The consequences are likely to be significant.
In places where residential segregation and racially polarized voting persist, minority voters may be cracked out of districts where they once had meaningful influence.
Representation will decline. The progress achieved under the Voting Rights Act will be at risk. The Court suggests that this outcome reflects the nation’s progress.
But the right to vote is not measured by formal access alone. It includes the opportunity to participate equally in the political process. Congress recognized that principle when it amended Section 2. The majority abandons it.
The result is that minority voters may once again be left with the right to cast ballots that carry little weight. That is not what the Voting Rights Act promises. And it is not what Congress intended.
I dissent because Congress chose a different path. I dissent because the Court fails to respect that choice. And I dissent because today’s decision undermines the fundamental principle of equal voting opportunity.
