Blue Brief 2025-2026

Laurence Claus

Professor of Law

Louisiana v. Callais: Letting Partisan Bias Hide Racial Bias

II.

T hrough the Voting Rights Act , Congress sought to help keep the United States Constitution’s promise that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” American courts have applied the Act to the practice of drawing district boundaries for elections to public office. How could drawing district boundaries deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race? Drawing district boundaries could abridge racial minorities’ right to vote if the drafters deliberately draw those boundaries in ways that give those voters less influence than other voters over who will be elected. For example, drafters who want to discriminate against racial minority voters could split the localities where those voters live among so many electoral districts that such voters have little influence in any of those districts. This might lead to few or no racial minority candidates being elected, even if the racial minority is a large and cohesive community.

In 1982, Congress amended the Voting Rights Act to add: “A violation ... is established if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election ... are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by [the preceding words of the Act] in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” In seeking to implement this somewhat convoluted language, policymakers and courts have faced a conundrum: how can we stop our governments from drawing district lines to discriminate by race without our remedies becoming so race conscious that they end up involving unconstitutional race discrimination too? In Louisiana v. Callais , Justice Alito’s majority opinion of the Court read the language of the Voting Rights Act in a new way. Justice Alito argued that narrowing the Act’s remedial

UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO SCHOOL OF LAW | Faculty Review of 2025-2026 U.S. Supreme Court Term | Page 8