Tag: scotus

Redistricting wars at a glance: Where the states stand after historic Supreme Court ruling

A handful of states began making moves this week to reconsider their congressional maps after the Supreme Court struck down maps in Louisiana, ruling that the maps were an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

The Supreme Court ruling narrowed the scope of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act on Wednesday to bar race-based districts, prompting Louisiana to reschedule its upcoming House primaries while the lines are redrawn.

Here are the states that moved this week to begin reviewing their maps:

Alabama: Gov. Kay Ivey ordered a special session of the state legislature next week to pave the way for redistricting.

Florida: The state legislature approved new districts that could help the GOP win up to four new House seats in November.

Louisiana: Gov. Jeff Landry postponed the state’s House primaries while the state works on a new congressional map.

South Carolina: Gov. Henry McMaster stopped short of ordering a review Friday but suggested the state might want to review its districts to ensure it is in line with the Supreme Court ruling.

Tennessee: Gov. Bill Lee called for a special session of his state legislature to review their congressional maps. 

Here are states that have also signaled they plan to review maps in the future: 

Georgia: Gov. Brian Kemp said it is too late in the election cycle to redistrict the state for 2026, but the decision requires the state to adopt new maps by 2028.

Mississippi: Gov. Tate Reeves said he is calling for a special session to take place 21 days after the Supreme Court ruling.

Virginia and California have also attempted to redraw their congressional maps, which would favor Democrats, but Virginia’s plan is in limbo because it is stuck in a legal battle with the state Supreme Court. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear challenges to California’s new map. 

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Democrat Rep. DelBene OUTRAGED After Supreme Court Blocks Race-Based Gerrymandering, Calls Ruling “Sad” for Democracy

Democrats have spent years presenting themselves as defenders of democratic institutions. That message becomes significantly harder to sustain when party leaders openly criticize constitutional rulings simply because those rulings disrupt their political strategy.

That contradiction was on full display during a recent interview on MSNOW when Rep. Susan DelBene reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision to block Louisiana’s race-based congressional map.

DelBene called the ruling a “sad day for democracy.”

The statement was revealing—not simply because of its rhetoric, but because of what the underlying case actually involved.

The Supreme Court stepped in after concerns that Louisiana’s congressional map relied too heavily on race when drawing district boundaries. The broader constitutional question is straightforward: should states be allowed to sort voters by race when determining political representation?

For many Democrats, the answer appears to be yes—at least when doing so benefits their electoral prospects.

During the interview, DelBene attempted to shift the conversation away from the constitutional concerns surrounding the map itself. Instead, she argued that courts should not be involved in decisions like this and suggested Congress should rewrite voting laws.

That argument ignores the basic function of the judiciary.

Courts exist to determine whether government actions comply with constitutional protections. When legislatures create policies that potentially violate equal protection principles, judicial review is not activism—it is a core constitutional responsibility.

DelBene also accused Republicans of attempting to “rig the system” because they are allegedly losing support nationwide.

That argument became even more contradictory when MSNOW raised the possibility of Democrats aggressively redrawing congressional districts in states like California to offset Republican redistricting efforts in states such as Texas.

DelBene did not reject the idea.

Instead, the conversation reflected a broader problem that has increasingly defined modern redistricting battles: many politicians oppose gerrymandering only when the opposing party benefits from it.

That is not a serious institutional position, but a transactional one.

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Supreme Court Hears Landmark Case On Geofence Warrants, Testing Digital Privacy Limits

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday heard oral arguments in Chatrie v. United States, a high-stakes case that could reshape Fourth Amendment protections in the digital age and determine the future of controversial “geofence” search warrants used by law enforcement.

Geofence warrants allow police and federal agents to compel companies like Google to disclose location data for all users present in a designated geographic area during a specific time window. Investigators use the tool to identify potential suspects by sifting through vast troves of smartphone location information, effectively searching first and developing probable cause later.

Civil liberties groups argue the practice is inherently overbroad and violates constitutional safeguards against unreasonable searches. Critics point to instances where innocent bystanders, protest attendees, and unrelated individuals have had their data swept up, sometimes due to warrants that extended far beyond the crime scene, reported Tech Crunch.

The case stems from the 2019 armed robbery of a bank in Virginia. Surveillance footage showed a suspect using a cellphone. Police obtained a geofence warrant from Google, requesting anonymized location data for devices within a small radius of the bank around the time of the crime. Google initially provided data for multiple accounts. Investigators then sought identifying information for a subset of users, including Okello Chatrie, who was later linked to the scene, arrested, and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison after pleading guilty.

Chatrie’s legal team challenged the warrant, contending it lacked sufficient probable cause tying him—or any specific account—to the robbery. Lower courts split on the issue, with one ruling the warrant failed to meet constitutional standards but ultimately allowing the evidence under the “good faith” exception. Chatrie’s appeal argues the warrant unconstitutionally permitted a broad search of hundreds of millions of Google users’ data.

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More Devastating News for Democrats

The Supreme Court’s bombshell ruling striking down racial gerrymandering under the Voting Rights Act sent shockwaves through the political landscape this week — and Southern Republican governors wasted no time acting on it. For Democrats, who have spent years leaning on race-based district engineering to protect their congressional seats, the timing couldn’t be worse.

Alabama and Tennessee both called special legislative sessions on Friday to redraw their congressional maps, and the dominoes are already starting to fall across the South.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey moved quickly, calling lawmakers into special session and signaling she wants the state ready to hold new primary elections if the courts move fast enough to allow it. Right now, Alabama’s May 19 primaries are set to proceed using a court-ordered map that artificially packs black voters into two districts — a map the Supreme Court’s ruling makes unconstitutional. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed an emergency motion Friday asking the court for a quick answer on whether the state can revert to its previously drawn map, which has just one majority-black district and would almost certainly deliver an additional Republican seat in Congress.

“By calling the Legislature into a special session, I am ensuring Alabama is prepared should the courts act quickly enough to allow Alabama’s previously drawn congressional and state Senate maps to be used during this election cycle,” Ivey said Friday afternoon.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee followed suit, calling his own special session to review the state’s congressional map. The current map includes a single Democratic-controlled district anchored in Memphis, and Lee’s office has warned that “any change to Tennessee’s congressional map must be enacted as soon as possible,” ahead of the August 6 primary.

It’s not hard to read the tea leaves on where this is headed.

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Barack Obama Weighs In On Supreme Court “Gutting” Voting Rights Act by Striking Down Louisiana’s Racially Gerrymandered Map and It Instantly Backfires

Former President Barack Obama lashed out at the United States Supreme Court for crippling the racial gerrymandering schemes practiced by his party, and Americans were quick to put him in his place.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling on Wednesday, correctly declaring Louisiana’s newly-drawn Democrat-friendly Congressional map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

The case, State of Louisiana v. Phillip Callais (and the related Press Robinson v. Phillip Callais), stems from Louisiana’s cowardly lawmakers caving to activist left-wing judges and creating a second “majority-minority” congressional district designed to elect a Democrat.

While the decision does not abolish the Voting Rights Act (VRA) or Section 2, ABC News notes that it raises the bar for challenges to election maps that liberal critics claim limit the ability of minority voters to elect candidates of their choosing, even if lawmakers did not intend to discriminate.

Leftist Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan whined in her dissent that the “gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in peril.”

“If other states follow Louisiana’s lead,” Kagan added, “the minority citizens residing there will no longer have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.”

Obama agreed with Kagan that the VRA was gutted and slammed the Court for not only “weakening” minority voting power but “abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy.”

“Today’s Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities – so long as they do it under the guise of ‘partisanship’ rather than explicit ‘racial bias,” Obama wrote.

“And it serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach,” he added.

“The good news is that such setbacks can be overcome. But that will only happen if citizens across the country who cherish our democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers – not just in the upcoming midterms or in high-profile races, but in every election and every level.”

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Republicans Could Gain DOZENS of House Seats After SCOTUS Outlaws Racial Gerrymandering — Here’s How

Republicans could pick up as many as 27 additional House seats following the Supreme Court’s decision to curb race-based redistricting, a shift that could reshape the 2026 midterm map.

The projection stems from analysis of how congressional districts may be redrawn now that states are no longer required to prioritize race when complying with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Estimates indicate that weakening Section 2 enforcement could ultimately produce even larger gains, with Axios reporting that 27 seats could shift toward Republicans over time.

The changes would be concentrated primarily in Southern states, where previous maps were challenged and altered to create additional majority-minority districts.

With the Court ruling that racially gerrymandered maps are unconstitutional, states now have broader authority to redraw districts using traditional and political considerations rather than racial targets.

The impact could be significant given the current balance of power in the House, where relatively small seat changes determine control.

The Louisiana case at the center of the ruling involved a dispute over a second majority-Black district added after legal challenges.

A group of voters later sued, arguing the map relied too heavily on race, and federal courts agreed before the issue reached the Supreme Court.

The Court’s decision effectively limits how Section 2 can be used to force states into drawing districts based on racial composition.

This removes a major legal obstacle for Republican-led legislatures seeking to revisit congressional maps ahead of 2026.

Ongoing legal battles in Texas and Florida suggest that mid-cycle redistricting efforts are already underway, with courts allowing those maps to remain in place while challenges proceed.

Republicans are also expected to benefit from structural advantages in turnout and district geography, which, combined with new map flexibility, could further strengthen their position.

The ruling does not eliminate the Voting Rights Act but significantly narrows its application in redistricting cases, reducing the likelihood of successful legal challenges based on racial representation claims.

While most pollsters believe that Democrats will take back the House in November, there are some signs that a so-called “blue wave” is not a foregone conclusion.

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Supreme Court Issues Landmark Ruling on Voting Rights Act: 4 Things to Know

The U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark decision on April 29 reinterpreted a provision of the Voting Rights Act and struck down a majority-black congressional district in Louisiana, opening the door for more redistricting across the United States.

In a 6–3 ruling, the high court found that the Louisiana district represented by Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.) relied on race when the congressional map was drawn up.

Ruling Impacts Key Voting Rights Act Section

The ruling was authored by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Alito wrote that “allowing race to play any part in government decisionmaking represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context.”

He said Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is effectively limited to instances of intentional discrimination, a very high standard.

“Only when understood this way does (Section 2) of the Voting Rights Act properly fit within Congress’s 15th Amendment enforcement power,” Alito wrote.

The 15th Amendment, a Reconstruction-era amendment of the Constitution that was ratified in 1870 following the end of the Civil War, allows Congress to pass laws ensuring that the right to vote cannot be denied “on ​account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.”

Interpreting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law in 1965, to “outlaw a map solely because it fails to provide a sufficient number of majority-minority districts would create a right that the amendment does not protect,” Alito argued, referring to the 15th Amendment.

Louisiana Map ‘Unconstitutional’

With the decision, the high court blocked an electoral map in Louisiana that would have given the state a second majority-black congressional district.

The Supreme Court’s ruling was issued amid a battle unfolding between Republican-led and Democratic-led states ​around the country involving the redrawing of electoral maps to change the composition of House of Representatives districts ahead of the November elections.

“That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander,” Alito wrote for the majority, adding that the Voting Rights Act doesn’t “require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district” and ruling that there is “no compelling interest” that justified Louisiana using race to create Fields’ district.

The U.S. Constitution, he added, “almost never permits a State to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny.”

The decision was issued as other states have moved to implement new congressional districts ahead of the November 2026 midterm elections.

Florida legislators were debating a proposed redrawing of the state’s congressional lines, which was submitted this month by Gov. Ron DeSantis and was intended to give Republicans a chance to pick up as many as four seats in the House of Representatives.

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US Supreme Court weighs claims Cisco aided Chinese human rights abuses

The U.S. Supreme Court confronted a case on Tuesday with broad implications for human rights litigation in American courts, a long-running lawsuit brought by members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement who have accused Cisco Systems of facilitating religious persecution in China.

The justices heard arguments in Cisco’s appeal of a lower court’s 2023 ruling that breathed new life into the 2011 lawsuit, brought under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789, that accused the company of knowingly developing technology that allowed China’s government to surveil and persecute Falun Gong members.

The court has a 6-3 conservative majority, and some of its conservative justices signaled agreement with the stance taken by Kannon Shanmugam, the lawyer for Cisco, during the arguments.

San Jose, California-based Cisco urged the Supreme Court to further limit the scope of the Alien Tort Statute, which lets non-U.S. citizens seek damages in American courts for violations of international law. The court in a series of decisions since 2013 has restricted the law’s reach, making it more difficult to hold U.S. corporations legally liable for human rights abuses.

President Donald Trump’s administration sided with Cisco in the case.

Paul Hoffman, a lawyer for the Falun Gong plaintiffs, argued strenuously against Cisco’s views.

“Under Cisco’s theory, even the corporate actors who provided the poison gas for Nazi crematoria would not be liable” under the Alien Tort Statute, Hoffman told the justices.

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Supreme Court rejects Florida parents’ challenge to school that ‘socially transitioned’ daughter

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Florida parents challenging school officials who withheld their child’s “social transition” from them under a since-rescinded policy.

In 2018, the Leon County School Board adopted a policy empowering schools to develop a “support plan” for students who wished to be treated as the opposite sex, including withholding the news from parents if a student did not want them to know. The policy was changed in 2022 after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, but not before one pair of parents sued the school district for keeping them in the dark about “socially transitioning” their middle-school-age daughter.

CBS News reported that January and Jeffrey Littlejohn’s daughter, identified in court documents only as AG, had asked her parents to change her name and address her with male pronouns. They refused, allowing her only to adopt “J” as a nickname, so AG discussed her gender confusion with a school counselor. A “support plan,” complete with preferred name and pronouns, was established, but the Littlejohns were not notified until their daughter told them herself.

The parents sued in 2021 but lost through multiple appeals, based largely on the conclusion that the 2022 policy change rendered the issue moot. They had sought damages on the grounds that it was the school’s “course of conduct, not the contents” of the 2018 plan that were at issue.

So the Littlejohns appealed to the nation’s highest court, but Monday’s order list confirmed their petition has been denied without elaboration. How individual justices voted was not listed, but CBS noted that Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas previously urged the Court to resolve similar questions, indicating they most likely would have taken the case. If true, that would mean that all six remaining justices voted to deny the petition, as only four votes are necessary to hear a case.

The indoctrination of children with left-wing ideology on sexuality, race, and other agenda items has long been a major concern in American public schools and libraries, from book shelves to drag events to classroom materials to even “transitioning” troubled children without parental input. Many schools have also displayed hostility to the rights and employment of individual teachers who refuse to go along with such agendas. Across the nation, controversy has also erupted in recent years over schools and libraries adopting books that expose sexual themes and activity to children, often in graphic detail and with pornographic imagery depicting specific sexual acts.

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Supreme Court To Review Geofencing In Pivotal Case For Privacy Rights

The Supreme Court on April 27 will hear oral arguments in a case with major implications for privacy rights—and how law enforcement uses Americans’ cell phone data while investigating crimes.

The case, Chatrie v. United States, centers on law enforcement’s use of “geofencing warrants”—judge-authorized requests for cell phone location data near the scene of a crime.

Okello Chatrie told the Supreme Court that the government’s use of these warrants, which resulted in a criminal conviction over his robbing a bank while his smart phone was on his person, violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The government, meanwhile, has argued that such data is not protected when provided voluntarily to a “third party” like Google.

The court said it would focus on the circumstances of Chatrie’s case rather than the constitutionality of geofencing more generally. However, experts say that the Supreme Court’s decision will reverberate through future cases concerning privacy in the digital age.

Dr. David Super, a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, described the case to The Epoch Times as “once-in-a-generation,” whatever the outcome.

Chatrie’s Warrant

In 2019, law enforcement received a geofence warrant from a state court seeking anonymized location data for devices within 150 meters (about 500 feet) of the bank robbery. In this form, the data couldn’t be used to identify specific cellphone users.

After Google complied with the first request, law enforcement then sought location data for devices over a longer, two-hour period, without seeking an additional court warrant. Google again provided the information.

Then—still without seeking a warrant—investigators asked Google for “de-anonymized subscriber information for three devices,” and Google complied.

One of those devices belonged to Chatrie, and the information provided the basis for Chatrie’s eventual conviction for armed robbery.

Though Chatrie confessed, his lawyers argue that the geofencing evidence should be tossed because the warrant deprived him of his Fourth Amendment rights, which guarantees that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.”

Chatrie’s lawyers argued that the geofence warrant allowed investigators to gather the location history of people who were near the scene of the crime even though there was no other probable cause.

Super told The Epoch Times that geofencing was “pivotal” to the case against Chatrie. “The question in Chatrie is whether something as dramatic as a geofencing search is limited by the Fourth Amendment and requires the government to show specific needs with a proper basis,” he said.

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