The conservative U.S. Supreme Court is moving toward allowing constituencies that make it harder for ethnic minorities to see themselves directly represented. A Wednesday hearing on Louisiana’s electoral map centered on the Voting Rights Act. This 1965 legislation prohibited states from suppressing the vote of black citizens in the electoral process.
The current court’s skepticism against this fits in with a broader trend of dismantling diversity policies and positive discrimination. For example, measures fought for by the civil rights movement are disappearing in the United States. And possibly a dozen Democratic seats in the House of Representatives.
Brett Kavanaugh, one of the judges appointed by President Trump, emphasized on Wednesday that “this court has held that race-based measures are allowed for a period of time … but they should not last indefinitely and have an end point.” As far as Kavanaugh is concerned, that point seems to have been passed. In 2023, he and the other conservative justices used the same argument to strike down affirmative action based on race in the university selection process.
Of the nine current justices, six were nominated by Republican presidents.
Census
The Louisiana case was brought by white voters who objected to the way voting districts were redrawn after the 2020 census. Louisiana has six Representatives in the House. After a relative increase in the number of black residents in the southern state and previous legal proceedings, a map emerged in which four districts are predominantly white and two (instead of previously one) are predominantly black. Which corresponds to the ethnic relations in Louisiana. According to the complainants, they have therefore become victims of ‘unlawful, intentional discrimination on the grounds of race’. The Democrats won a seat in the 2024 elections with the new map.
Then-US President Lyndon Johnson gives a speech at the Capitol on August 6, 1965 for the signing of the Voting Rights Act.
Photo AP
When drawing up their districts, many states have had to take into account that, under the Voting Rights Act, the vote of minorities cannot be disproportionately diluted. If the Supreme Court does indeed strike down this part of the law, Republican-controlled Southern states could gerrymander their maps even further and expand their party size in Washington.
For example, the Republican faction in the House could grow by twelve or, according to a Democratic survey, even by nineteen seats. Currently, several states are engaged in partisan interference in electoral district boundaries. It is unclear whether the Court’s ruling would have any effect on the 2026 midterm elections. The judgment is expected mid-next year.
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