{"id":2498227,"date":"2025-10-13T06:50:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T10:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/louisiana-urges-scotus-to-end-race-based-redistricting\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T06:53:40","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T10:53:40","slug":"louisiana-urges-scotus-to-end-race-based-redistricting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/louisiana-urges-scotus-to-end-race-based-redistricting\/","title":{"rendered":"Louisiana Urges SCOTUS To End Race-Based Redistricting"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Flouisiana-urges-scotus-to-end-race-based-redistricting%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2498227&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear two crucial cases, *Louisiana v. Callais* and *Robinson v. Callais*, which address whether race-based considerations in the redistricting process are unconstitutional. These cases arise from conflicts over Louisiana&#8217;s congressional maps, which initially included a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/upcoming-scotus-case-could-reshape-redistricting\/\" title=\"Upcoming SCOTUS Case Could Reshape Re...ing\">single black-majority district<\/a>. Plaintiffs, supported by groups like the ACLU, sued, claiming the maps diluted black voting strength under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA).After an injunction and subsequent map revisions that added a second black-majority district,new plaintiffs argued the state unlawfully prioritized race,violating the 14th Amendment&#8217;s equal protection clause.<\/p>\n<p>Louisiana&#8217;s Attorney General Liz Murrill explained that left-wing groups have used Section 2 litigation strategically to influence redistricting,frequently enough selecting favorable courts. The legal tension stems from conflicting Supreme Court precedents, notably concerning the role race can play in redistricting, highlighted by the court&#8217;s 1993 *shaw v. Reno* decision, which prohibits race as the predominant factor. Louisiana argues that <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >race-based redistricting perpetuates harmful stereotypes<\/a> and that the constitution should be &#8220;color blind.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If the Supreme Court rules against race-based redistricting, it could curtail politically motivated lawsuits that push for majority-minority districts, reshaping the redistricting landscape. Oral arguments are expected to begin soon, with a final ruling anticipated in the 2025-2026 term.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em>Is the use of race in the redistricting process unconstitutional?<\/em> <\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s a key question the U.S. Supreme Court will be considering in a pair of high-profile cases set to be argued before the justices on Wednesday. Known as <em>Louisiana v. Callais<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Robinson v. Callais<\/em>, the matters provide the court with the opportunity to end longstanding conflicts between the Constitution and race-centric voting provisions that have plagued states and the redistricting process for decades. <\/p>\n<p>We believe these cases are &ldquo;good vehicle[s] for the Supreme Court to address some of these issues that have been percolating for a very long time,&rdquo; Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told The Federalist.<\/p>\n<p>As The Federalist previously reported, the origins of the dispute <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/08\/08\/upcoming-scotus-case-could-reshape-redistricting-as-we-know-it\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">date back<\/a> to spring 2022, when the Louisiana Legislature drafted a congressional map with a single black-majority district. This prompted a group of plaintiffs &mdash; represented by left-wing groups like the ACLU &mdash; to sue, alleging that the map &ldquo;dilut[ed] black voting strength&rdquo; and therefore violated <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/crt\/section-2-voting-rights-act\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Section 2<\/a> of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n<p>Following an injunction barring the map&rsquo;s implementation by a district court judge, continued litigation in the case ultimately resulted in the state redrawing the map to include a second black-majority district. This led to another lawsuit from a different group of plaintiffs, who claimed the state unlawfully prioritized race in the map&rsquo;s creation and therefore violated the 14th Amendment&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/wex\/equal_protection\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">equal protection clause<\/a>. A three-judge panel on a separate district court agreed with these plaintiffs and blocked the new map&rsquo;s implementation. <\/p>\n<p>While the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case and was expected to issue a verdict during its 2024-2025 term, the justices announced on the final day of the session that it would be rehearing arguments in the case this fall. The court notably issued an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/orders\/courtorders\/080125zr_i4dk.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">order<\/a> in early August instructing parties in the case to address the question of &ldquo;[w]hether the State&rsquo;s intentional creation of a second <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-will-examine-racial-redistricting-law-in-coming-term\/\" title=\"... will examine racial re...ing law in coming term\">majority-minority congressional district violates<\/a> the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><strong>[READ:[READ:<a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/09\/30\/the-federalists-guide-to-the-2025-supreme-court-term\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Federalist&rsquo;s Guide To The 2025 Supreme Court Term<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Speaking with The Federalist, Murrill said the <em>Callais<\/em> cases provide a good example of how left-wing groups and attorneys have &ldquo;effectively weaponized&rdquo; the judicial system &ldquo;against states and their legislative process&rdquo; when it comes to redistricting. By challenging maps that disadvantage their political allies under Section 2 of the VRA, the Republican attorney general noted, these Democrat-aligned activists &ldquo;can pick their venue &mdash; kind of hand-choose their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/report-supreme-court-to-decide-on-hearing-suit-declaring-all-male-draft-discriminatory\/\" title=\"Report: ... to Decide on ...ing Suit Declaring All-Male Draft Discriminatory\">federal district court judge<\/a> in some cases &mdash; and bring the case strictly under Section 2, which means there&rsquo;s only one judge that&rsquo;s going to decide the case and make all the factual findings.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;That allows for substantial manipulation of the <a href=\"https:\/\/legal-resources.uslegalforms.com\/m\/manifest-error-or-clearly-wrong-rule#:~:text=The%20term%20%22manifest%20error%20or,clear%20evidence%20to%20the%20contrary.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">manifest error standard of review<\/a> to benefit those plaintiffs and &hellip; almost entirely foreclose review of those factual findings on appeal. If there were a constitutional challenge, it&rsquo;s a three-judge court, and so that, I think, helps guard against judge shopping,&rdquo; Murrill said. <\/p>\n<p>As The Federalist <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/08\/08\/upcoming-scotus-case-could-reshape-redistricting-as-we-know-it\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reported<\/a>, this ongoing weaponization of the judiciary has largely been made possible by confounding SCOTUS precedent on the use of race in redistricting and friction between Section 2 of the VRA and the 14th Amendment. In its 1993 <em>Shaw v. Reno<\/em> decision, for example, the high court effectively ruled, as The Heritage Foundation&rsquo;s Hans von Spakovsky previously summarized, that &ldquo;race cannot be the&nbsp;<em>predominant factor<\/em>&nbsp;when you do redistricting&rdquo; [emphasis added].<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I think that there&rsquo;s just been this evolving jurisprudence emanating specifically from the Supreme Court that legislatures have had to kind of make sense of and apply in carrying out their constitutional duty to draw maps. &hellip; That jurisprudence is not easy to understand, and in some cases, it&rsquo;s entirely illogical,&rdquo; Murrill said. Simply saying, &ldquo;&lsquo;Race can&rsquo;t predominate,&rsquo; is not a workable standard, and I don&rsquo;t think it ever made any sense. [The court is basically saying], &lsquo;You can think about race, [but] you just can&rsquo;t think about it too much.&rsquo;&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>In its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/DocketPDF\/24\/24-109\/370895\/20250827134212077_Callais%20-%20Supplemental%20Opening%20Merits%20Brief.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">brief<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/08\/29\/in-landmark-case-louisiana-asks-scotus-to-put-the-kibosh-on-race-based-redistricting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">filed<\/a> with the Supreme Court in late August, Louisiana argued that the consideration of race in the redistricting process is unconstitutional, noting that America&rsquo;s founding document is &ldquo;color blind.&rdquo; The state further claimed that the 14th Amendment&rsquo;s equal protection clause &ldquo;commands that the government &lsquo;may never use race as a stereotype or negative,&rsquo;&rdquo; and &ldquo;Yet race-based redistricting rests on an invidious stereotype: that all minorities, by virtue of their membership in their racial class, think alike and share the same interests and voting preferences.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Louisiana wants out of this abhorrent system of racial discrimination. The Court should answer yes to the question presented for reargument &mdash; the intentional creation of a second majority-minority district in [Louisiana&rsquo;s most-recent congressional map] is unconstitutional &mdash; and affirm the judgment below,&rdquo; the brief reads.<\/p>\n<p>Should the Supreme Court deem race-based redistricting to be unlawful in its upcoming decision, Murrill predicted that such a precedent would &ldquo;significantly reduce, if not entirely eliminate,&rdquo; the ability of left-wing activists and lawyers to &ldquo;strategically pursue strictly Section 2 cases with friendly judges, get their fact finding all lined up to their benefit, and then force legislatures into creating majority-minority maps where the whole objective is to build a district that is predominantly one race or the other.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve always thought that our case &hellip; was the right vehicle and the right set of facts to evaluate that friction [between Section 2 of the VRA and the 14th Amendment&rsquo;s equal protection clause],&rdquo; Murrill added.<\/p>\n<p>Oral arguments in <em>Louisiana v. Callais<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Robinson v. Callais<\/em> are expected to begin at 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday. A final decision on the matter is not expected until later in the Supreme Court&rsquo;s 2025-2026 term. <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is race-based redistricting constitutional? Supreme Court to decide<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":2498228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/SCOTUS-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[32869,6100,62145,6994,32570],"class_list":["post-2498227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-legal-battle","tag-louisiana","tag-race-based-redistricting","tag-scotus","tag-voting-rights"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/SCOTUS-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2498227"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2498231,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2498227\/revisions\/2498231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2498228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2498227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2498227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2498227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}