{"id":2597556,"date":"2026-05-01T08:01:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/scotus-decision-striking-down-racial-gerrymandering-shows-alito-plays-the-long-game\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T09:02:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:02:06","slug":"scotus-decision-striking-down-racial-gerrymandering-shows-alito-plays-the-long-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/scotus-decision-striking-down-racial-gerrymandering-shows-alito-plays-the-long-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Samuel Alito Plays The Constitutional Long Game"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><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%2Fscotus-decision-striking-down-racial-gerrymandering-shows-alito-plays-the-long-game%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=2597556&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 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>Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito doesn\u2019t always write a majority opinion that gives conservatives exactly what they want <em>when they want<\/em>. Sometimes, he writes decisions that get the needed five votes to make a majority \u2014 and move the needle in the long term.<\/p>\n<p>He did it again this week in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2026\/04\/29\/supreme-court-smacks-down-rampant-race-based-gerrymandering\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Louisiana v. Callais<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The case arose after Louisiana created a second majority-black congressional district after a lower court said that the state\u2019s original congressional map (which had one majority-black district) likely violated Section 2. The high court ultimately ruled that Section 2 is designed to enforce the Constitution\u2019s prohibition on intentional racial discrimination but that \u201cUnfortunately, lower courts have sometimes applied this Court\u2019s \u00a72 precedents in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In other words, the decision doesn\u2019t blow up Section 2 of the VRA, as some on the left <a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/news-and-politics\/2025\/09\/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-louisiana-v-callais.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">hypothesized<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/10\/14\/us\/politics\/supreme-court-voting-rights-act.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">feared<\/a> it would. It also doesn\u2019t do what Clarence Thomas \u2014 who wrote a concurring opinion that said he \u201cwould go further and hold that \u00a72 of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate districting at all\u201d \u2014 wanted it to do.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, it\u2019s actually \u201c*better* than getting rid of section 2 outright, because it means section 2 can be used to CHALLENGE majority-minority districts (for impermissibly using race),\u201d as Article 3 Project\u2019s Senior Counsel <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/willchamberlain\/status\/2049498511951933913?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Will Chamberlain<\/a> said on X.<\/p>\n<p>This ruling reflects the same Alito that The Federalist\u2019s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway describes in her new book, <em>Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored The Constitution<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>What Alito has shown \u2014 and what Hemingway reports on in her new book \u2014 is that he plays the long game. Alito has a history of trying to figure out what can get him to five votes and how to use those votes to move the needle. Alito himself said as much in 2022:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf a justice is assigned to write an opinion for the Court, the justice has to try to get at least four colleagues to agree, and that can be a difficult process. What is ultimately produced may be quite different from what the author or any other member of the majority would prefer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Such reality was evident in Alito\u2019s majority opinion in the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.oyez.org\/cases\/2013\/13-354\">Hobby Lobby<\/a><\/em> case, which held corporation owners are exempt from the Obamacare contraceptive requirement if it burdens their religious beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>As Hemingway explained, \u201cThe decision was not an unqualified win for religious adherents, as Justice Anthony Kennedy\u2019s concurrence emphasized the limited scope of the ruling.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But, Alito had a \u201ctact\u201d that \u201cmade him more likely than Scalia to keep a fragile majority together,\u201d Hemingway reported, noting that Kennedy was reluctant to join the majority opinion. <\/p>\n<p>Alito is also able to bring a coalition of justices together with his tactical line of questioning. <\/p>\n<p>In <em>Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky<\/em>, Andrew Cilek was temporarily barred from voting because he wore a Tea Party shirt to a polling location and a Minnesota law prohibited the wearing of \u201cpolitical\u201d apparel to polling locations, Hemingway explained in her book. During oral arguments, Alito asked the lawyer defending the statute a series of hypothetical questions about how different articles of clothing would be judged under the statute. Eventually, Alito asked whether a shirt with the Second Amendment would be considered political, to which the attorney said yes. Alito followed up by asking whether a shirt with the First Amendment would be considered political, prompting the court to laugh after he showed he absurdity of the statute, as Hemingway explains.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPrior to oral arguments, Supreme Court handicappers thought the case would be closely divided,\u201d Hemingway wrote. \u201cIn fact, Chief Justice Roberts\u2019 majority opinion, which made heavy use of Alito\u2019s colloquy in oral argument, was joined by seven justices, including the liberals Ginsburg and Kagan.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Alito\u2019s ability to use questioning to help guide the court to a place where more justices are willing to sign on underscores his unique position on the bench.   <\/p>\n<p>Then there are cases where Alito may not get everything he \u2014 or other justices \u2014 want (as Alito alluded to in 2022), but ultimately helps set the groundwork for future additional victories, or, as Hemingway describes, \u201cAlito [shows] the deft way he handles bad precedents when the Court is not ready to overrule them in <em>American Legion v. American Humanist Association.<\/em>\u201d <\/p>\n<p>In that case, a World War I memorial cross that sat on public land was challenged under the Establishment Clause. The court ultimately ruled that there is an exception for historical monuments under the Lemon Test, which is a test the high court created in 1971 to determine if a government action violates the First Amendment\u2019s Establishment Clause.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Stephen Breyer joined the majority while Thomas wrote that he would have taken the ruling a step further and overruled the Lemon test in all contexts. But as Hemingway explains, three years later in <em>Kennedy v. Bremerton School District<\/em>, \u201cGorsuch\u2019s majority opinion relied on Alito\u2019s <em>American Legion <\/em>opinion in overruling <em>Lemon<\/em> \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of Alito\u2019s former clerks, Professor Joel Alicea of the Catholic University of America\u2019s law school, explains how the justice\u2019s patient, tactical approach achieved the previously elusive goal of rescuing Establishment Clause jurisprudence from the confusion of <em>Lemon<\/em> and putting it on sound originalist footing: \u2018While Justice Alito\u2019s opinion in <em>American Legion<\/em> may not have been as pure or as satisfying as many originalists would have liked, it demonstrated a masterful ability to navigate the practical, doctrinal, and theoretical difficulties of moving the Court in an originalist direction in the face of internal disagreement amongst the justices \u2014 and to bring about exactly the result that originalists seek,&#8217;\u201d Hemingway reported.<\/p>\n<p>As Alito has shown in case after case, he is able to craft opinions that build coalitions and set the groundwork for additional victories. Narrowing the use of Section 2 in <em>Louisiana v. Callais<\/em> is yet just another example of Alito teeing the ball up, as Chamberlain pointed out.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>   Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito doesn\u2019t always write a majority opinion that gives conservatives exactly what they want when they want. Sometimes, he writes decisions that get the needed five votes to make a majority \u2014 and move the needle in the long term. He did it again this week in Louisiana v. Callais .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":2597557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/United_States_Supreme_Court_Building_at_night-e1777607895637.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546,33651],"tags":[4430,64415,6994,32570],"class_list":["post-2597556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","category-the-western-journal","tag-alito","tag-racial-gerrymandering","tag-scotus","tag-voting-rights"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/United_States_Supreme_Court_Building_at_night-e1777607895637.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597556","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\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2597556"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2597603,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2597556\/revisions\/2597603"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2597557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2597556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2597556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2597556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}