Supreme Court Signals Democrats’ Days Of Drawing Up Congressional Districts By Race Might Be Over

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court signaled on Wednesday that the days of creating congressional districts based on race may be numbered.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh — whose vote, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, could prove decisive in Louisiana v. Callais — questioned during oral arguments whether the time for using race-based remedies has expired.

“The issue, as you know, is that this court’s cases in a variety of contexts have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes for a long period of time, decades in some cases, but that they should not be indefinite and should have an endpoint,” Kavanaugh said. “What exactly do you think the end point should be for the intentional use of race to create districts?”

NAACP Legal Defense Fund President Janai Nelson, who defended Louisiana’s creation of a second majority black congressional district, argued there should be no time limit.

Louisiana’s congressional map has been caught in litigation for years, highlighting the “conflicting demands” of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits election practices that result in “denial or abridgement” of citizens to vote based on race, and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

A group of black voters objected to the inclusion of only one majority-black district in Louisiana’s 2022 map, prompting a court to order the state to go back to the drawing board. When the legislature passed