Ending Section 2 requirement affects Southern states

If the Supreme Court opts to toss the Gingles parameters for redistricting lawsuits and ultimately rules that Louisiana’s creation of a second black-majority congressional district, to comply with Section 2 of the VRA, is unconstitutional, it would have ramifications far beyond the Pelican State.

Motivated by lawsuits or the threat of lawsuits, various southern states, including Alabama and Mississippi, have drawn congressional districts to comply with the Gingles standard of allowing minority groups to select their preferred candidate.

An analysis by the left-wing group Fair Fight Action found that if the Gingles holding is overruled, as many as 19 Democratic congressional seats throughout the South could become targets of redistricting to be drawn into either safe Republican seats or competitive seats.

The group identified two seats in Alabama, three seats in Florida, two seats in Georgia, two seats in Louisiana, one seat in Missouri, one seat in North Carolina, one seat in South Carolina, one seat in Tennessee, and five seats in Texas that are VRA-complaint seats under Gingles holding, which GOP legislatures could redraw if the Supreme Court tosses its current Section 2 framework.

Pushed by President Donald Trump and other GOP leaders, several states have engaged in mid-decade redistricting efforts, aiming to pass more partisan maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. While Democrats have attempted to counter the GOP changes with their own redraws, including in California, their options are more limited.

If the Supreme Court overturns the Gingles holding for redistricting under the Voting Rights Act, it could open the floodgates to more GOP mid-decade redistricting efforts. While the decision to redraw districts would be up to each state, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has already said that if the Supreme Court strikes down the current holding on Section 2, “it will necessitate new congressional redistricting in a number of states, including Florida.”

Overruling Gingles would likely curb lawsuits filed against states’ congressional maps, but such a ruling is unlikely to end litigation over how maps are drawn, Carrie Severino, president of the conservative advocacy group Judicial Crisis Network, told the Washington Examiner.

“They’ll find other things to litigate about, but it still improves the situation if there are clear standards based on the actual text of the Voting Rights Act,” Severino said.

Louisiana and DOJ want Section 2 requirement tossed

In the case to be reargued on Wednesday, Louisiana has asked for clarity on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The state already had to redraw its congressional map after a federal court ordered the creation of the second-black majority district, which is now at issue before the high court.

“Louisiana’s experience suggests that Gingles cannot be reformed and should be overruled. But, in all events, the States desperately need clarity that so far has been absent from this Court’s redistricting cases,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in the brief filed to the Supreme Court. “Absent that clarity, nothing will change in the extraordinary expenditure of time, money, and resources that the States (and the courts) face after every redistricting cycle.”

Louisiana has taken the position that Gingles should be overruled and the state’s creation of a second black-majority district should be ruled as unconstitutional.

“You have states like Louisiana saying, ‘Please just tell us what standard we’re supposed to follow,’ but when you have competing lines of precedent that different judges balance differently, then states have no predictability as to how any one map is going to fare in the courts,” Severino said.

The Justice Department has also argued to the justices for the current Gingles framework be tossed.

“Properly construed, Section 2’s ‘results’ test should never have compelled race-predominant districting. But that has been the consequence of misguided applications of the vague framework for vote-dilution claims established in Thornburg v. Gingles,” the DOJ’s brief to the high court said. “This Court should modify that judge-made framework to address the constitutional problems that it has created.”

The Supreme Court overruling Gingles would likely be more in line with recent rulings by the current makeup of the high court, where the majority has opted to remove race-based factors in multiple, unrelated laws, instead looking at laws that don’t factor in race.

“The Gingles precedent goes contrary to the line of cases like Students for Fair Admissions, requiring the use of race-neutral factors. That case dealt with education, but in this case, the same principle applies in voting. The Gingles requirement for redistricting to be done in a very race-conscious way doesn’t fit well with those precedents,” Severino told the Washington Examiner, referring to a Supreme Court ruling that struck down affirmative action in college admissions.

Voter coalition seeks to uphold Gingles holding

While Louisiana has opted not to defend its congressional map with a second black-majority district, a coalition of voters supporting its creation argued in a brief to the high court that the district comports “with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment guarantees of equal voting rights and the VRA’s requirements.”

The coalition points to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Allen v. Milligan, which upheld the Gingles framework for Section 2 challenges. The same nine justices currently on the high court decided that case.

While the justices’ focus on the constitutionality of creating the second black-majority district for the second round of arguments points toward this case being the best chance for Gingles to fall, the recent ruling upholding Gingles serves as a warning that the high court could elect to maintain the precedent.

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“I think it’s premature to say it’s a dead man walking, because we’ve seen them take the opportunity where they could have done it and not eliminated Gingles,” Severino said. “That said, the fact that they asked for rehearing suggests to me that they have more of an appetite for reconsidering some of the erroneous previous precedents in this case.”

Oral arguments at the Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais begin at 10 a.m., with a decision in the case expected in the coming months.