Here is the petition. Justice Kavanaugh has set July 22 for a response from North Dakota.
Category Archives: Voting Rights Act
“Clarence Thomas has long tried to undercut the Voting Rights Act. Now, he may finally have the numbers”
Joan Biskupic has this analysis at CNN.
Voting Rights Plaintiffs and Texas Officials Spar Over Mid-Decade Redistricting
A group of plaintiffs in a case challenging the State’s redistricting map have asked the trial court to reopen testimony in the case in response to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s decision to call a special session to consider redrawing some of the State’s congressional lines. Michael Li has good coverage of these proceedings on his X feed.
From the plaintiffs’ motion:
New evidence reveals that witnesses, including Senator Huffman, Chris Gober, and Adam Kincaid, potentially falsely testified that Texas’s congressional map was drawn without consideration of race. Specifically, the Governor has called a special session of the Legislature to take up redistricting of the congressional map, approvingly citing a letter from the United States Department of Justice asserting that evidence exists to prove that the current congressional map was drawn with race as a predominant consideration. The deposition and trial testimony of the relevant witnesses and this new evidence are flatly contradictory. One or the other is false, and Plaintiffs and the Court are entitled to probe whether key witnesses truthfully testified at deposition and at trial—on the central question in this case—given this new evidence. That testimony is not only probative to Plaintiffs’ specific claims regarding the existing congressional map but is also probative to the credibility of these witnesses in general on all of Plaintiffs’ claims.
The State has responded to oppose the plaintiff’s motion.
From the State’s response:
As established by the robust trial record, the Texas Legislature did not racially discriminate in drawing the current congressional electoral districts—full stop. Following that robust trial record, and perhaps because of it, the Brooks, Gonzales, and MALC Plaintiffs (Plaintiffs) have filed an Emergency Motion, requesting that this Court reopen the record and schedule an expedited hear-ing in response to “new evidence.” This “new evidence” contains no alleged facts about how districts were drawn back in 2021. It does not even consist of any new, contradictory statements by the witnesses whose testimony they seek to reopen. Instead, it is a legal argument by the De-partment of Justice (DOJ)—a third party with no personal knowledge—about changes to redis-tricting caselaw in 2024, as well as Governor Abbott’s call for the Legislature to consider congres-sional redistricting in an upcoming special session. Neither the DOJ letter nor the Governor’s Proclamation—both of which come nearly four years after the Legislature passed the current maps—constitute new evidence requiring the Court to reopen the record. And neither in any way impugns the truthfulness of Chairwoman Joan Huffman, Chris Gober, and Adam Kincaid.
VoteBeat on Texas Redistricting
VoteBeat covers the Texas redistricting here. They also have a fantastic quote from our brilliant colleague Justin Levitt.
From the article:
Justin Levitt, a constitutional law expert who served in the DOJ under former President Barack Obama, said the agency misinterpreted Petteway in its letter. That 2024 decision, Levitt said, did not rule on what constitutes an unconstitutional racial gerrymander — it just asserted that the Voting Rights Act does not let individual racial or ethnic groups join together to claim that political boundaries dilute their votes.
The argument laid out in the letter, he added, is not befitting of DOJ’s typical quality, in both Democratic and Republican administrations — especially on a topic so familiar to the agency.
“It’s sloppily dashed-off work,” Levitt said. “It looks like the sort of thing I’d expect from an AI engine that didn’t know how to do law.”
The DOJ declined to comment.
Could the Texas Mid-Decade Redistricting Scheme Backfire?
This article from Politico, quoting Democratic lawmakers, makes the case.
From the article:
A Donald Trump-backed effort to gerrymander Texas would boost the GOP’s attempts to cling to its razor-thin House majority in next year’s midterms — but it also runs a serious risk of backfiring.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asked the state legislature to redraw the map during its special session this summer, following a push from the White House and the Justice Department. Ohio is also required by state law to redraw its lines before next year’s midterms. Taken together, Republicans see an opportunity to potentially create more GOP seats, guarding against the possibility of a blue wave in 2026.
But in Texas, Republicans are in danger of creating a so-called dummymander, whereby an attempt to draw more seats for one party accidentally benefits the other. Texas’ congressional map already heavily favors the GOP, so any changes to further benefit the party would have to walk a careful line. Adding Republican voters to blue districts to reduce Democrats’ margins means taking those same voters out of the red districts where they reside. The result is more competitive districts across the board — ones Democrats hope to take advantage of as they harness anti-Trump energy in the midterms.
Two Events Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Section 203 (the Language Provisions) of the Voting Rights Act
Announcement via email:
The ACLU SoCal, ALC, CA Common Cause, and PANA are excited to share that registration is now open for “More Voices, Stronger Democracy: The 50th Anniversary of Section 203,” a statewide summit on language access and voting rights in California.
First up: The Pre-Summit Webinar (virtual)
Get grounded in the history, impact, and future of Section 203 before the Summit begins. This virtual event will feature reflections from leaders who helped secure the original passage and reauthorizations of this landmark provision of the Voting Rights Act. Panelists will offer unique perspectives on the law’s implementation, enforcement, and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for building a truly multilingual democracy.
Panelists:
- Henry Der, former Executive Director of Chinese for Affirmative Action
- Karen Narasaki, former Commissioner, US Commission on Civil Rights
- Rosalind Gold, Chief Public Policy Officer with NALEO Educational Fund
- Jim Tucker, Section 203 Enforcement Attorney
- Angelo Ancheta, Senior Research and Policy Counsel with Demos
Webinar Date: August 6, 2025
Register Here: https://tinyurl.com/203-webinar
More Voices, Stronger Democracy: The 50th Anniversary of Section 203 (in person)
We’ll be bringing together advocates, organizers, elections officials, and community leaders to reflect on 50 years of Section 203, elevate the voices of limited-English proficient voters, and strategize for the future of multilingual democracy. Panels will cover implementation, new research, advocacy, and organizing efforts from across the state.
- Opening Remarks: Shirley N. Weber, Ph.D., California Secretary of State
- Keynote: Xavier Becerra, Former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services; Former California Attorney General
Summit Date: August 26, 2025
Location: The California Endowment, Sacramento
Event Info & Registration: https://tinyurl.com/Section-203
With the VRA on life-support, now is the time to reconsider goals and tactics
The Supreme Court’s decision to set Louisiana v. Callais for reargument next term suggests that the Voting Rights Act’s respite from the conservative Court’s attacks is likely over. It is, therefore, time for those who remain committed to the United States as a multiracial democracy to start reimagining our goals and tactics. Toward that end, I offer some food for thought and a preview from a chapter I recently completed that will appear in Race, Racism, and the Law (Aziza Ahmed & Guy-Uriel E. Charles, eds., forthcoming 2026). The chapter makes a few points.
An increasingly conservative Supreme Court and an evolving political landscape require a reassessment of our goals and tactics in the continued fight for an inclusive multiracial democracy.
The Roberts Court is not just a reluctant enforcer of the openness of the political process, but a hostile policer of congressional efforts to do so. The gutting of the VRA is a manifestation of this trend. Voting rights activist must reconcile themselves to having lost their most important political ally in the fight for a multiracial democracy as it was conceived in the mid-twentieth century.
But the need for reevaluating goes beyond the conservative Court. The VRA and the related priorities of the voting rights community are increasingly mismatched with how race continues to influence politics and with evolving conceptions of race.
Taking the latter point first. As Americans increasingly operate with broader understandings of race, there are genuine questions about how relevant the categories that defined voting rights jurisprudence under the VRA will be in the future. The twentieth-century version of race, which “divide[s] us all up into a handful of groups,” is increasingly incongruous with the fact that “American families have become increasingly multicultural.” Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard Coll., 600 U.S. 181, 293 (2023) (Gorsuch, J., concurring). Americans appear to agree with Chief Justice Roberts that the typical racial “categories [on various forms] are themselves imprecise in many ways . . . [sometimes] plainly overbroad.” Id. at 216 (Roberts, J.)
This concession does not require accepting the conservative Court’s colorblind vision of the Constitution or its belief that an entirely white legislature would be legitimate so long as there were no formal barriers to electoral participation. Still, we would be remiss not to consider the evolving ways in which race matters to politics: discrete categories often matter less than shared intersectional experiences of racial and economic oppression.
Third and most importantly, we need to reconsider our tactics and expand our thinking in our fight for a more inclusive multiracial democracy. Failures to address enduring economic and social inequality, far more than the remaining formal and informal barriers to voting, are the primary obstacles to realizing an inclusive multiracial democracy.
The chapter makes the case for each of these claims—most importantly the third—and argues that, given these realities, a new paradigm for change should measure progress in terms of the policy returns to voters of color of their political participation. This means prioritizing building political power through political parties with a focus on party-centric reforms to revitalize our party system. In recognition of the skepticism with which voting rights advocates and the communities they represent are likely to approach a call that involves working with political parties, the chapter devotes significant attention to the promises and pitfalls for communities of color of more fully embracing a party-centric power-building strategy in the fight for a meaningfully inclusive multiracial democracy.
“Where the Voting Rights Act stands after the Supreme Court punts on a Louisiana case”
Hansi Lo Wang, looking ahead for NPR.
Roundup of stories on the Louisiana congressional redistricting case
You can read about the punt from (so far):
Me, AP, Times-Picayune, Louisiana Illuminator, NPR, CBS, NYT, WaPo, SCOTUSblog, The Hill, Politico, CNN, Cook Political Report, Washington Examiner, The Federalist
Supreme Court sets Louisiana congressional case for reargument
Well, that was unexpected. As mentioned a moment ago, the Court today punted on the Louisiana congressional case, Louisiana v. Callais, setting it for reargument next Term. The order says that the Court will “issue an order scheduling argument and specifying any additional questions to be addressed in supplemental briefing” “in due course.”
That’s an odd outcome in a case that’s already taken a wild path to get to the Court. Louisiana’s first set of congressional lines were passed over a gubernatorial veto, and enjoined as a VRA violation in mid-June 2022, in a decision put on pause by the Supreme Court awaiting Alabama’s Milligan case. When the Supreme Court upheld Milligan in 2023, it vacated the stay — but that meant that Louisiana’s 2022 elections were held under the unlawful lines. A bit more nuttiness ensued with different 5th Circuit panels stopping and starting different facets of the case, but eventually we got to a clear need, affirmed by the 5th Circuit, for a remedial plan.
In January 2024, the legislature passed that remedial plan — not in the part of the state where the VRA plaintiffs had asked for a remedial district, but in a part of the state where it felt more politically useful. Plaintiffs in Callais noted that the remedial district looked a lot like one that had been enjoined in 1996 as unjustifiably based predominantly on race. And so these plaintiffs challenged the new remedial district, along with a swipe at the VRA in the process — not in the same court that had been overseeing the VRA case, but in a different district. The three-judge trial court enjoined the new remedial district … and that led to the decision I was expecting today.
I think this case should be pretty easy (and that’s backed up by the fact that Louisiana and the NAACP LDF are on the same side of the case, which is … unusual). Yes, race was a factor in drawing the remedial map, because the state had an obligation to draw a district compliant with the VRA (which plaintiffs in the original case established after an enormous amount of fact-specific evidence, confirmed by the not-notoriously-liberal 5th Circuit, in an opinion itself in line with exactly how the Supreme Court said these cases should go in Milligan). But as to how the remedial map was drawn, that seems shot through with political calculations, including how to best rearrange the seat of the Speaker of the House. (Indeed, the hardest part of this case is whether the State got so political in its line drawing that it didn’t actually remedy the VRA problem … but that’s not what these plaintiffs are challenging.) And after the Court’s decision in Alexander v. SC NAACP last year, I’d think that the evidence here would be comparatively straightforward that if the State’s going to go all in on politics, it can permissibly decide on the particular political composition on the district it wanted to draw.
Justice Thomas, in a solo dissent from today’s rescheduling order, thinks this case is also easy, but in an entirely different direction. As he points out, “[f]or over three decades, I have called for “a systematic reassessment of our interpretation of §2 [of the Voting Rights Act].” And that’s true, he has. But mostly because he has an impression of §2 that is, as I’ve written before, a completely fictional construct. In today’s dissent, Justice Thomas says that “[i]n effect, the upshot of Milligan is that whenever a State feasibly can create an additional majority-minority district, it must do so.” That’s … not even close to how the law works right now (as a bunch of unsuccessful VRA claims this very cycle should attest).
And so I worry a bit that Justice Thomas’s view of this appeal as an easy case may be pulling some of the Justices away from what I think should make this appeal an easy case, leading to an opportunity in re-argument for the fictional version of the VRA to once again overcomplicate the Court’s decisionmaking. We’ll see soon enough.
In the meantime, the status quo leaves the existing January 2024 Louisiana congressional map in place. The Court stayed the three-judge trial court’s order in May 2024, and I don’t think anything in today’s rescheduling order interferes with that continuing stay.
Halfway through the 2021 redistricting cycle, there are still 35 pending cases challenging congressional or state legislative lines in 11 states, and at least one (Ohio) where lines will have to be redrawn even without pending litigation. Buckle up.
Supreme Court punts on Louisiana congressional map
The Court won’t be issuing an opinion today on Louisiana’s congressional map after all. Instead, they’ll re-hear argument next term.
More analysis coming momentarily.
“Survey shows Californians want ballots in more languages”
The LA Times reports, as we near the 50th anniversary in August of the expansion of language protections under the federal Voting Rights Act.
DOJ weighs in in Alabama preclearance
In the Alabama redistricting case, readers will recall the May 8 unanimous 571-page-opinion from one judge first appointed by Reagan and two judges appointed by Trump; the opinion said, inter alia, “try as we might, we cannot understand the 2023 Plan as anything other than an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians’ voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way.”
Travis Crum noted at the time that this decision made an ideal candidate for “bail-in” back into the preclearance regime under section 3 of the Voting Rights Act, which remains a viable (but underutilized) path to preclearance in the face of intentional misbehavior.
One set of plaintiffs in Alabama have asked for section 3 bail-in. Friday afternoon, the DOJ weighed in, opposing the need for preclearance and asserting that outright defiance of federal courts in the service of discrimination isn’t discrimination that’s flagrant enough to matter under the statutory standard.
(The brief also has a curious Etch-a-Sketch approach to both history and precedent. It claims that the “Supreme Court found in 2013 that Alabama’s past constitutional and statutory violations of the right to vote were insufficient to sustain continued coverage under Section 5.” There’s no pincite for that claim. Given the discussion at pp. 2629-30 of Shelby County, I think that’s a particularly strained reading of what the Supreme Court actually found in the case.)
When will Supreme Court Further Erode Our Democracy . . . probably not until next week
The Court did not decide Louisiana v. Callais today.
The case involves a challenge to Louisiana’s congressional maps. In 2023, after a federal court found Louisiana had violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by failing to provide a second minority opportunity district for its black voters, the state enacted the challenged map. The new map established a second majority–black congressional district, an uncouth “shaky ‘Z’ across the state” not unlike a district previously enjoined. The new district was then challenged by the current plaintiffs as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Louisiana defended on the grounds, first, that it used race based on its good-faith and court-ordered belief that the VRA required a second minority-opportunity district and, second, that the district is the result of its desire to preserve the districts of its two most important incumbent representatives (Mike Johnson and Stephen Scalise–serving as Speaker and Majority Leader, respectively). The lower court held that the district did indeed violate the Equal Protection Clause.
My prediction: Nothing good will come of this case. The question is only how far they will go to further undermine VRA.