SCOTUS decisions today put Louisiana v. Callais at the center of voting-rights law after the Supreme Court held that Congress lacks power to outlaw voting practices with discriminatory effects unless the facts give rise to a strong inference of racial discrimination. The ruling leaves plaintiffs facing a new threshold in redistricting cases: they must first produce an alternative map that performs just as well as the state’s map under constitutionally permissible criteria.
The Court’s test matters now because it can end a case before a merits hearing. A plaintiff who cannot match the state’s map on those criteria may never reach the stage of showing that the state’s stated basis is a pretext for intentional discrimination.
Louisiana v. Callais
In Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court effectively overruled Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as it had functioned for discriminatory-effects claims. Section 2 had barred voting practices with racially discriminatory effects even when plaintiffs could not prove discriminatory intent, and Congress had amended it in part to ensure that minority voters could obtain meaningful representation in multimember elected bodies.
The court appears to treat that congressional purpose as unconstitutional. The decision therefore narrows the space Congress once used to reach voting laws that produced unequal results without direct proof of intent, and it does so by tying liability to a strong inference of racial discrimination.
Allen v. Milligan
After Callais, the Supreme Court invoked a colorblind constitution in a shadow docket ruling that allowed Alabama to eliminate the congressional district a district court had ordered to remedy racial discrimination. The per curiam opinion in Allen v. Milligan effectively reversed the court’s own 2023 merits opinion in the same litigation.
The Allen ruling rejected the district court’s factual finding that Alabama intentionally discriminated against Black voters. It also barely mentioned the district court’s analysis of extensive evidence of racial discrimination, even though that court had found that Alabama deviated significantly from its prior redistricting practices and criteria.
Just-as-well standard
Callais requires a voting-rights plaintiff alleging disparate impact in redistricting to produce an alternative map that performs just as well as the state’s map with respect to all of the state’s constitutionally permissible criteria. The Court combined that rule with prior precedent demanding a presumption of legislative good faith in intentional-discrimination cases.
Taken together, those standards give states a strong threshold defense. Once a state points to any constitutionally permissible basis for its map, plaintiffs may be shut out before they can test whether that basis is pretext for intentional discrimination. Whether future challenges survive will turn on whether plaintiffs can satisfy Callais’ just-as-well comparison at the outset.
The destructive reach of Callais has become clearer in the month and a half since the decision, especially for minority voters challenging maps that reduce electoral power. Several other southern states have redistricted in ways that eliminate or reduce that power, and the new standard may make those challenges harder to press under Section 2.
