US supreme court rules Louisiana must redraw its congressional map in landmark case [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Wed 29 Apr 2026 10.12 EDT
Last modified on Wed 29 Apr 2026 10.14 EDT
The US supreme court has ruled that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map, in a landmark voting rights case.
At the heart of the case, Louisiana v Callais, was a thorny question of how much lawmakers are allowed to consider race when they redraw districts to ensure that Black voters are adequately represented. The supreme court initially heard oral arguments in the case last March, but took the unusual step of asking lawyers to re-argue the case last fall. In setting the case for a re-argument, the justices raised the stakes of the case, asking lawyers to focus on whether section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was constitutional.
The decision comes after years of legal wrangling over the boundaries of the map.
After the 2020 census, the Republican-controlled state legislature drew a new congressional map in which Black voters comprised a majority in just one district despite being about a third of the state’s population. A group of Black voters sued the state in 2022 under the Voting Rights Act, arguing that the map diluted the influence of Black voters in the state by packing them into one district and spreading them out over the remaining ones.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/29/supreme-court-louisiana-congressional-map-case-ruling
Link to RULING - https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-109_21o3.pdf
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