Updated April 29, 2026 at 2:43 PM PDT
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, ruled that Louisiana's 2024 election map, which created a second majority-Black congressional district, was "an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."
Although the court technically kept Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act intact, Wednesday's decision is the latest in a series of rulings that have all but gutted the landmark 1965 law, which came out of the Civil Rights Movement and protected the collective voting power of racial minorities.
Experts expect the ruling to diminish minority representation across all levels of government.
"This is one of the most important and most pernicious decisions of the Supreme Court in the last century," said Rick Hasen, an election law expert who leads the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA, in an interview with NPR. "What's left of the Voting Rights Act is a hollow shell of what it was before."
It isn't yet clear how the decision will affect November's midterm elections, as candidate filing deadlines and primaries have passed in many states, meaning it would seem to be too late in those places to redraw maps in response to the ruling. Lawmakers and candidates in states including Tennessee and Georgia quickly called for new districts Wednesday.
The state most directly affected is Louisiana, which is now forced to redraw its congressional map, likely with one fewer Democratic-leaning district.
The high court's ruling reinterprets longstanding protections under the Voting Rights Act's Section 2, in places with racially polarized voting. Plaintiffs suing to argue that political lines dilute minority voting power must now prove discriminatory intent, and not just discriminatory effect.
The focus of Section 2 must be banning "intentional racial discrimination," wrote Justice Samuel Alito, whose majority opinion was joined by his fellow conservative-leaning justices.
But Atiba Ellis, a professor and an associate dean at Case Western Reserve University's law school, said proving such intent is notoriously difficult, thus weakening the law's protections.
"We, in essence, are asking plaintiffs now to find a smoking gun, the proof of the racist intent that is sort of objectively and consciously articulated in order to prove their case," Ellis said. "The problem with discrimination cases is that most legislators in this context know better than to say that, right?"
Many redistricting experts now expect Republican-controlled state legislatures in the South to eliminate at least some Democratic-represented House districts that were likely protected under the Voting Rights Act, though the timing is unclear.
Hours after the ruling, lawmakers in Florida approved a new congressional map aimed at creating four more GOP-leaning districts.
While the office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, cited the Louisiana case's ruling in making its case for a new map, the districts passed by state lawmakers do not target the districts that were likely protected by Section 2.
Edward Greim, who represented the plaintiffs in the Louisiana case, lauded the decision, telling St. Louis Public Radio that it moves the country closer to a "colorblind society."
"There's going to be districts out there that are, I would say, fake Voting Rights Act districts that really shouldn't have been drawn, those will be challenged," he said.
An increasingly toothless Voting Rights Act
Long considered the jewel in the crown of the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act has been largely dismembered since 2013 by the increasingly conservative Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts. The major exception was a decision just two years ago that upheld the court's past rulings on Section 2 in a redistricting case out of Alabama.
At issue in the Louisiana case was the map drawn by the Republican-led legislature after the decennial census. Following years of litigation, the state, with a 30% Black population, first fought and then agreed to draw a second majority-Black district. Two of the state's six House members are African American.
Normally, that would have been the end of the case, but a self-described group of "non-African-American voters" intervened after the new maps were drawn, to object to the legislature's redistricting.
The Trump administration supported them, contending that the Black voters should not have gotten a second majority-minority district.
On Wednesday, the court agreed.
"Correctly understood, Section 2 does not impose liability at odds with the Constitution, and it should not have imposed liability on Louisiana for its 2022 map," Alito wrote in the majority opinion. "Compliance with Section 2 thus could not justify the State's use of race-based redistricting here."
In her dissent, which was joined by the court's other two liberal-leaning justices, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that she dissented "because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent because the Court's decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity."
An NPR analysis done before the ruling came out found a ruling affecting Section 2 provisions could put at risk at least 15 House districts currently represented by Black members of Congress.
"Black Americans have never been fully represented in the electoral process," Damon Hewitt, president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement. "This ruling makes it less likely that we ever will."
NPR's Krishnadev Calamur and St. Louis Public Radio's Jason Rosenbaum contributed reporting.
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