Redistricting based on race is unconstitutional, the Department of Justice (DOJ) told the Supreme Court as the court prepares to hear a major election law case next month.
The comments by the DOJ came in a Sept. 24 brief as the nation’s highest court is poised to rehear Louisiana v. Callais and Robinson v. Callais on Oct. 15.
The court already heard the consolidated cases on March 24 but declined to issue a ruling.
Arguments in March focused on whether a version of Louisiana’s congressional map violated Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act. Section 2 prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate based on race, color, or membership in a large language minority group such as American Indian, Asian American, Alaskan Native, or American Hispanic.
Courts have held that in certain circumstances, the Voting Rights Act permits states to take race into account when drawing electoral boundaries, but maps drawn explicitly based on race are unconstitutional.
On Aug. 1, the Supreme Court directed the litigants to present arguments about whether the court-ordered creation of a second black-majority congressional district in Louisiana is constitutional.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the new brief that the answer to the question of whether Louisiana’s “intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments” is “yes.”
The 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law.
The 15th Amendment forbids the federal government and the states from interfering with voting rights based on a citizen’s race.
Lower courts have repeatedly interpreted the landmark ruling in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) to compel states to “draw district lines where race predominates over neutral districting principles as a remedy for perceived violations” of Section 2, Sauer said.
They have done this even in cases in which the evidence “does not suggest any objective risk that intentional discrimination has had the effect of rendering the political process not ‘equally open’ to racial minorities,” he said.
These rulings have forced states to violate the Constitution to deal with “phantom” violations of the Voting Rights Act, Sauer said.
The Supreme Court should reinterpret Gingles so other courts can avoid such problems in the future, he said.
Previously in the case, a federal district judge ruled that an earlier version of the map, which included one black-majority congressional district, discriminated against black voters, who constitute nearly one-third of the state’s population.
The judge ordered the state to create a second black-majority district after finding that its failure to do so likely violated Section 2.
A group of non-black voters sued, arguing that the map with two black-majority districts discriminated against non-minorities by engaging “in explicit, racial segregation of voters.”
The Supreme Court voted in May 2024 to require Louisiana to use the disputed congressional map that created the second black-majority district in that year’s elections.
Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry said in an application that not moving forward with the map so close to the 2024 elections would cause “chaos.”
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told The Epoch Times last month that her state has long argued that the Supreme Court’s “redistricting jurisprudence needs to be drastically changed or overruled.”
“By requiring state legislatures to draw maps that sort voters by race, it forces us to violate the federal Constitution,” she told The Epoch Times at the time.
Murrill’s office filed a brief on Aug. 27.
“[Racial classifications] are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality,” the brief states, quoting a 1993 precedent.
And racial classifications related to the right to vote “are uniquely odious” because they “harm voters of all races whose skin colors determine their voting districts,” the brief reads.
According to the brief, such classifications harm states, which end up being sued “for considering race too much or too little”; the federal judiciary, which “must pick winners and losers based on race”; and the United States’ “stature as a nation.”
The Supreme Court’s interpretation of Section 2 in Thornburg v. Gingles “is itself unconstitutional,” even though the court has tried to make Gingles “workable, coherent, predictable, and constitutional,” the brief states.
On Aug. 27, Louisiana voter Press Robinson, who supports maintaining the second black-majority congressional district, filed a brief saying Louisiana was following the law when it ordered the redistricting.
In redistricting, the state complied with the 14th and 15th Amendments, as well as the Voting Rights Act, he said.
On Sept. 24, the DOJ also filed a motion with the Supreme Court asking to participate in the oral argument on Oct. 15.
The federal government “has a substantial interest in ensuring that its citizens are not subject to unconstitutional racial discrimination,” it said.
It is unclear when the Supreme Court will rule on the motion.
The Supreme Court’s eventual ruling in the case could force lawmakers nationwide in the future to scale back the use of race in the redistricting process.
The outcome of the Supreme Court case could also affect the balance of power in the federal legislative branch.
Currently, Republicans maintain a thin majority over Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The second black-majority seat in dispute in Louisiana is currently held by Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.).
The redrawn, elongated district stretches from Shreveport in the northwest to the state capital of Baton Rouge, following the Mississippi and Red rivers.
Republicans won five U.S. House districts in Louisiana in the 2022 elections, while Democrats won one.
After the court-ordered map was adopted, Republicans won four of the state’s six U.S. House districts in the 2024 elections, while Democrats won two.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared Sept. 26, 2025, in The Epoch Times.