How the Callais Ruling Ends Racial Gerrymandering Under the Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court’s Callais v. Louisiana decision has dismantled a major liberal institutional asymmetry embedded in the Voting Rights Act (VRA), fundamentally altering how racial gerrymandering claims are adjudicated. The ruling eliminates a decades-old legal framework that disproportionately benefited Democratic-leaning minority voters while restricting Republican-leaning white voters from similar claims.

Callais Ends the VRA’s Partisan Gerrymandering Asymmetry

For decades, the VRA allowed racial minorities—who predominantly vote Democratic—to challenge redistricting maps drawn by Republican legislatures in the South. These challenges often succeeded in blocking maps under Section 2 of the VRA. Meanwhile, Democratic-controlled legislatures in the North frequently drew gerrymandered maps that packed minority voters into concentrated districts, yet these maps faced far fewer legal challenges and survived scrutiny.

As I noted in October 2023:

Because African American and Hispanic voters tend to vote for Democratic politicians, Democrats will benefit from VRA claims. By contrast, because White voters tend to vote for Republican politicians, Republicans will less likely benefit from VRA claims.

The Callais decision removes this asymmetry. Going forward, racial minorities will no longer receive an electoral boost under the VRA unless there is clear evidence of intentional discrimination. The ruling aligns with the Court’s earlier decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which barred the use of “benign” racial classifications to “help” minorities—a policy I have argued often harms the very groups it claims to assist.

Zero-Sum Consequences of Racial Classifications

All racial classifications in redistricting are zero-sum. To favor one racial group inherently disadvantages another. The post-Callais era may lead to a realignment of political power in the South, particularly in states where minority voters were historically packed into Democratic-leaning districts. The Gingles standard, which froze 1980s-era politics in place, is now obsolete. Many aging members of opportunity districts have served for decades, but their districts will no longer be artificially constructed to maximize Democratic representation.

As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in Allen v. Milligan:

"The minority simply cannot elect its preferred candidates; it is, after all, a minority."

This reflects a return to a more neutral redistricting principle: the group with fewer voters will naturally face greater difficulty electing its preferred candidates. The neutral rule is not that federal courts draw bizarrely shaped districts to cobble together black voters for no reason other than their race. Decades of VRA litigation conditioned us to believe that Gingles was neutral. It was not.

Callais and the Warped Conception of Neutrality

The aftermath of Callais further exposes the flawed assumption that the VRA’s pre-Callais framework was neutral. The private plaintiffs in the case requested the Supreme Court to issue its judgment immediately, despite no injunction blocking new redistricting maps. While the issuance of the judgment itself has no immediate legal effect on map implementation, the plaintiffs sought to expedite the Court’s decision.

The Court granted their motion in a per curiam order, allowing the judgment to be issued forthwith. However, to permit the losing party time to file a petition for rehearing, the Clerk of Court typically waits 32 days after the entry of judgment before sending the official mandate. This procedural detail underscores the broader shift: the Court is no longer prioritizing the VRA’s race-conscious redistricting framework over traditional principles of electoral neutrality.