Hello, this is Jeff Barnamont reading the Supreme Court Syllabus in Louisiana v. Calais et al. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. Consolidated with Robinson et al. v. Calais et al. on sorcery to the same court. Argued October 15, 2025, decided April 29, 2026. These cases concern whether Louisiana's new congressional map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. In 2022, after the state redrew its congressional districts, a federal judge in Robinson V. Ardoyne, 605 F SUP 3759 from the Middle District of Louisiana held that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it did not include an additional majority black district. But when the state drew a new map, SB8, that contained such a district, the new map was challenged as a racial gerrymander. A three-judge court in Calais v. Landry, 732 F Sub 3rd 574, Western District of Louisiana, held that SB8 violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the state appealed to this court. The parties originally briefed and argued this suit last term, and their arguments at that time highlighted problems in the existing body of Section 2 case law. One problem resulted from the rule that in racial gerrymandering cases, unlike other cases involving claims of racial discrimination, strict scrutiny is triggered only if race predominated in the state's decision-making process. Another problem stemmed from the long unresolved question whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act provides a compelling reason that may justify the intentional use of race in drawing legislative districts. For over thirty years, the court has simply assumed, for the sake of argument, that the answer is yes. These and other problems convince the court that the time had come to resolve whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act can indeed provide a compelling reason for race-based districting. Held, because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the state's use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Constitution almost never permits a state to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny. The court's precedents have identified only two compelling interests that can satisfy strict scrutiny, avoiding imminent and serious risks to human safety in prisons, and remediating specific identified instances of past discrimination that violated the Constitution or a statute. The question presented is whether compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act should be added to this very short list of compelling interests. The Court now holds that compliance with Section 2, as properly construed, can provide such an interest. A proper interpretation of Section 2 requires examining the statutory text to understand what it demands with respect to drawing legislative districts. Under Section 2A, the Court takes as a given that a legislative districting map may constitute a standard practice or procedure that may violate Section 2 if it results in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote on account of race or color. Section 2b establishes that a violation occurs when political processes are not equally open to participation by members of a racial group in that they have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to elect representatives of their choice. The key concept is less opportunity than other members of the electorate, which sets a baseline against which to assess the opportunity of minority voters. That baseline, the opportunity that any given group of voters has to elect their candidate of choice, depends on the voting preferences of other voters in the district. For example, in a district where most voters prefer Democratic candidates, a Republican voter in that district will have a low chance of securing the election of his or her preferred candidate. The roster of voters who end up in a given district depends in turn on the districting criteria the state uses to draw a legislative map. Thus, the opportunity of these members of the electorate to contribute their votes to a winning cause is whatever opportunity results from the application of the state's combination of permissible districting criteria. That is what a randomly selected individual voter and group of voters can expect regarding their opportunity to elect their preferred candidate. Under Section 2, a minority voter is entitled to nothing less and nothing more. This interpretation is the best reading of the statutory text and ensures that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not exceed Congress's authority under Section 2 of the 15th Amendment, which confers on Congress the power to enforce the amendment by appropriate legislation. As the court has long held, the 15th Amendment bars only state action motivated by discriminatory purpose. So a law that seeks to enforce the 15th Amendment by prohibiting mere disparate impact would fail to enforce a right that the amendment secures. That is never appropriate because Congress cannot enforce a constitutional right by changing what the right is. For this reason, the focus of Section 2 must be enforcement of the 15th Amendment's prohibition on intentional racial discrimination. When Section 2 of the Act is properly interpreted, it imposes liability only when circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred. Properly understood, Section 2 thus does not intrude on states' prerogatives to draw districts based on non-racial factors, including to achieve partisan advantage. In short, Section 2 imposes liability only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the state intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race. Not only does this interpretation follow from the plain text of Section 2, but it is consistent with the limited authority that the 15th Amendment confers. This interpretation does not require abandonment of the framework for evaluating Section 2 claims that the court established in Thornburg v. Gingles 478 U.S. 30, a Supreme Court case from 1986. The court need only update the framework so it aligns with the statutory text and reflects important developments since the court decided Gingles 40 years ago. Four historical developments are of particular note. First, vast social change has occurred throughout the country, and particularly in the South, which have made great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination. Second, a full-blown two-party system has emerged in the states where Section 2 suits are most common, and there is frequently a correlation between race and party preference. Third, in Rucho v. Common Cause 588-U. This court held that partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in federal court, and this holding creates an incentive for litigants to exploit Section 2 for partisan purposes by repackaging a partisan gerrymandering claim as a racial gerrymandering claim. Fourth, the increased use and capabilities of computers in drawing districts and creating illustrative maps mean that a Section II plaintiff can easily identify an alternative map that fully achieves all the state's legitimate goals while producing greater racial balance, if such a map is possible. In light of these developments, the court updates the Gingles framework and realigns it with the text of Section 2 and constitutional principles. The first Gingles precondition is that a community of minority voters must be sufficiently numerous and compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district. While many Section 2 plaintiffs have simply provided illustrative maps with their desired number of majority-minority districts, such maps prove only that the state could create an additional majority-minority district, not the state's failure to do so violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. To show the latter, plaintiffs' illustrative maps must satisfy two conditions. Plaintiffs cannot use race as a districting criterion in drawing illustrative maps, and illustrative maps must meet all the state's legitimate districting objectives, including traditional districting criteria and the state's specified political goals. To satisfy the second and third preconditions, politically cohesive voting by the minority and racial bloc voting by the majority, the plaintiffs must provide an analysis that controls for party affiliation, showing that voters engage in racial bloc voting that cannot be explained by partisan affiliation. On the totality of circumstances inquiry, the focus must be on evidence that has more than a remote bearing on what the 15th Amendment prohibits, present-day intentional racial discrimination regarding voting. Discrimination that occurred some time ago and present-day disparities characterized as ongoing effects of societal discrimination are entitled to much less weight. Nothing in Alan v. Milligan 599-U.S. 1, a Supreme Court case from 2023, dictates a different result. That case merely addressed whether Alabama's novel evidentiary standard required a change to existing Section 2 precedent. Allen did not address whether race-based redistricting under Section 2 could extend indefinitely into the future, despite significant changes in conditions, nor did it address whether Section 2 plaintiffs must disentangle race from politics in proving their case. Indeed, Allen did not address the 14th Amendment at all. But here, the decision before the court is based on the Fourteenth Amendment. Under the updated Gingles framework, the facts of this suit easily require affirms. Louisiana's enactment of SB8 triggered strict scrutiny because the state's underlying goal was racial. The state configured District 6 to achieve a black voting age population over 50%, because the Robinson Court held that Section 2 likely required the creation of an additional majority black district. The state's intentional compliance with the court's demands constituted an express acknowledgement that race played a role in the drawing of district lines. No compelling interest justifies SB8 because Section 2 did not require the state to create a new majority-minority district. At every step of the Gingles framework, the Robinson plaintiffs failed to prove their Section 2 case. On the first Gingles precondition, the Robinson plaintiffs did not meet their burden because they did not provide an illustrative map that met all the state's non-racial goals, including the state's political goals. On the second and third Gingles preconditions, the Robinson plaintiffs offered evidence that black and white voters consistently supported different candidates, but their analysis did not control for partisan preferences. And on the totality of circumstances, the Robinson plaintiffs failed to show an objective likelihood of intentional discrimination, instead relying on historical evidence and evidence that failed to disentangle race from politics. Affirmed and remanded. Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the court, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett joined. Justice Thomas filed a concurring opinion in which Justice Gorsuch joined. Justice Kagan filed a dissenting opinion in which Justices Sotomayor and Jackson joined. Thank you for listening. Please help us by rating and reviewing this podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and make sure you subscribe so you can get all of the OT twenty five decisions automatically delivered to your device. And if you wish to communicate with the podcast, please email us at Scotusdecisions at gmail.com or click the link in the show notes. Thanks and have a great day.