Supreme Court ruling restores proper limits on race-based maps | Opinion

On April 29, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s congressional map constituted a racial gerrymander. Specifically, the court found that the Voting Rights Act neither permits nor requires states to draw congressional districts primarily based on race.

To little surprise, headlines quickly followed claiming the decision “guts,” “demolishes” or “eviscerates” the Voting Rights Act. Even Justice Elena Kagan described it as a “demolition.”

In reality, the court reaffirmed the proper meaning of the Voting Rights Act by rejecting racial gerrymandering. Those advocating for race-based districting in the name of racial justice misunderstand both how the Constitution treats race and how Americans ought to think about it.

No, Supreme Court's decision does not 'gut' the Voting Rights Act

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act broadly prohibits racial discrimination. For years, however, some have argued that it goes further, allowing race to be a major factor in drawing congressional districts and, in some cases, even requiring it.

Following the 2020 census, Louisiana, like every state, began redrawing its congressional map. Its original map was struck down in 2022 after a federal judge ruled that having only one majority-Black district out of six in a state that is roughly one-third Black likely violated Section 2. Because Louisiana could create a second majority-Black district, the state was effectively required to do so.

Louisiana responded with a new map that stretched a district across more than half the state, from Baton Rouge to Shreveport, to comply with that ruling. But that revised map was also challenged, this time for relying too heavily on race, and it was ultimately deemed an unconstitutional racial gerrymander before reaching the Supreme Court.

In drawing that map, Louisiana subordinated many of the traditional principles that typically guide redistricting, including compactness, respect for county and city boundaries, community interests and other longstanding considerations.

Racial discrimination is unconstitutional, and as Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s majority opinion, “Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to enforce the Constitution ‒ not collide with it.” 

Despite the hyperbole from much of the news media and from Justice Kagan’s dissent, the court’s ruling ultimately reinforces Section 2’s intended purpose. Race should not predominate in redistricting decisions, certainly not at the expense of the broader factors that more accurately shape communities and voter interests.

Racial gerrymandering is wrong, no matter the purpose

The ruling has sparked predictable criticism from Democrats and many of their allies in the media. But much of that criticism overlooks a deeper contradiction: Proponents of this broader interpretation of Section 2 are often endorsing the very kind of race-based decision-making the law was originally meant to prevent.

Kagan’s dissent captures this tension clearly. The justice opens with a hypothetical highlighting how race-based districting can allow a “State’s Black community to elect a representative of its choice, whom no neighboring community would put in office.” 

But that argument rests on the assumption that racial identity itself is the primary driver of political interest – that Black voters across distant parts of a state inherently share more politically with one another than with their immediate geographic neighbors of another race.

In Louisiana’s case, defenders of the map effectively argue that Black communities separated by hundreds of miles are more politically cohesive than citizens living in the same local communities.

Under this expansive view of Section 2, race becomes the dominant factor in redistricting, elevated above the many other considerations that affect political communities and voter interests. But reducing Americans primarily to racial categories is exactly the kind of thinking the Constitution is meant to guard against.

It is also far from clear that minority voters are best represented by being packed into heavily race-based districts, rather than treated as vital constituencies within broader communities shaped by geography and local concerns.

Racial discrimination is both unconstitutional and morally wrong, even when pursued in the name of engineered equality. The Supreme Court’s decision reaffirms that principle, even if critics are determined to portray it otherwise.

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.