UPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES — Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch got a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to all but admit support for states intentionally discriminating on the basis of race in the redistricting process.
The moment came during the Supreme Court’s Wednesday oral arguments for a pair of cases known as Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais, which center on the Louisiana Legislature’s use of race when creating its recent congressional map.
As The Federalist previously reported, the matter first arose “following ‘a previous lawsuit … where plaintiffs argued that the prior map’ put forward by the state ‘violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting minority votes,’ according to Oyez.” A district court order and subsequent legal battle prompted the Louisiana Legislature to “draft a new map last year ‘that included a second majority-black district,’ which plaintiffs in Louisiana v. Callais contend violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause by ‘prioritizing race in its creation.’”
While the Supreme Court was initially supposed to issue a verdict on the matter during its 2024-2025 term, the court announced on the last day of the session that it would be rehearing arguments in the case this fall. The justices notably issued an order over the summer instructing parties in the case to address the question of “[w]hether [Louisiana’s] intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”
Hellbound and Down 