SCOTUS Punts Louisiana Redistricting Case To Next Term

The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Friday that it is punting a high-profile Louisiana redistricting case to its next term.

While the case was originally expected to be decided this session, the nation’s highest court disclosed in an order that Louisiana v. Callais will be reargued during its 2025-2026 term. The announcement was made alongside the release of the court’s final opinions from this year’s term.

The case in question first arose following “a previous lawsuit, Robinson v. Ardoin, 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. This 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 a “three-judge federal district court panel agreed with plaintiffs’ arguments” and “blocked the map’s use for future elections” in a April 2024 ruling, the Supreme Court “intervened the following month, placing a hold on the lower court’s decision and opening the door for the map’s use in the 2024 elections,” as The Federalist reported previously. The high court subsequently agreed to take up the case to determine whether the map violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s decision to punt on delivering a final opinion in the case until next year. In expressing his disagreement with SCOTUS’s order, the senior justice aptly noted, “Congress requires this Court to exercise jurisdiction over constitutional challenges to congressional redistricting, and we accordingly have an obligation to resolve such challenges promptly.”

“That resolution is particularly critical here, as these cases highlight the intractable conflict between this Court’s interpretation of §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), 52 U. S. C. §10301, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Constitution is supreme over statutes … and no intervening developments will change that,” Thomas wrote. “I thus see no reason to avoid deciding these cases now. In doing so, I would make clear that where this Court’s interpretation of §2 breaches the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee, the Constitution controls.”

The George H.W. Bush appointee concluded his dissent by expressing hope that the Court “will soon realize that the conflict its §2 jurisprudence has sown with the Constitution is too severe to ignore.”

“Because the Court declines to reach that conclusion today and instead inexplicably schedules these cases for reargument, I respectfully dissent,” he added.