U.S. Supreme Court rules 6-3 striking down Louisiana's new redistricting map

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:00]Want to get straight to CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford who has been reading through the opinion. Jan.

[00:00:06]>> Well, Major, we just got this ruling uh within the last couple minutes. Uh the justices in a six-3 vote, a decision written by Justice Samuel Alito for the other five conservatives are striking down a second majority black district in Louisiana, ruling that state officials focused on race and that amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

[00:00:28]Now, this decision is a major one under the Voting Rights Act. It will go well beyond Louisiana. It's going to make it um based on what we're seeing so far, it will make it harder for state officials to draw up these so-called majority minority districts uh which have been used uh for decades uh and have increased uh black representation and minority representation in Congress. Uh and it also, I think, will call into question about a dozen or so existing uh majority minority districts. mostly in the south. Now, those districts, as you know, Major, have been a way for Democrats to pick up seats in some of those states, those red states in the South. So, this ruling is a win, I think we can say, for Republicans. But legally, this is a Supreme Court that going back 20 years or more, has been saying in case after case, a consistent line of cases that the Constitution is colorblind. And that's why we've seen the Supreme Court do things like throw out affirmative action in college admissions. this line this line of cases very consistent with the court's ruling today. What about the midterms? Um I think this ruling coming today six months after it was argued back in October uh may come too late to have an impact on these upcoming midterm elections. I think the focus will be going forward limiting uh states uh from considering race uh when they're trying to consciously and intentionally draw up districts to increase minority representation. That means measure that you might not have as many of those kind of ink blocked states or states that have districts that zigzag like a Z where they go from like this one did from Shreport all the way down 250 mi to Baton Rouge scooping up black voters along the way to again pick up voters to get enough black voters there to have that majority. So I think you know that will restrict some of those case those districts for sure. Um looking at this decision it's 37 pages long. Uh there is a descent by liberal justice Elena Kagan that appears to be longer than the majority and it looks like uh a barn burner. uh she uh is saying that today's ruling will gut uh is gutting the Voting Rights Act and will call into peril um some of the accomplishments that we've seen over that historic 1965 law that really dismantled a Jim Crow and systemic uh barriers to voting for black people in the South. Of course, the Supreme Court today, as they have in recent decisions on voting rights, is saying the country has moved past that.

[00:03:02]Uh it's time to stop intentionally focusing on race. And as ch as Chief Justice John Roberts said in a case back in 2007, uh the way to end discrimination, race discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race. And this Supreme Court with those six conservative justices believes that racial preferences uh whether it's in affirmative action, whether it's in redistricting, that can amount to unconstitutional uh race discrimination. Major >> Jan, I'm going let you continue to read the opinion and if there's anything else that strikes you, please let me know. In the meantime, I want to bring in Jessica Levenson, CBS News legal contributor and Loyola Law School professor. So, this is section two, Jessica, of the Voting Rights Act. And then in 1982, Congress also passed an amendment to the Voting Rights Act, making it clear that some voters could, if they felt that the district lines were extremely discriminatory to their interests, bring legal action. So there's two a aspects of congressional intent here. Yet the Supreme Court said we've taken that into consideration, but we still believe that process violates the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act section two has gone a bit too far.

[00:04:13]>> That's exactly right. And I want to echo what Jan said, which is that this is a case where the Supreme Court, once again, a majority has said, don't use race. We've seen this when it comes to admissions and higher education. We've seen it in other circumstances.

[00:04:29]And here again, we have the court saying in order to comply in this case with the Voting Rights Act, and you just mentioned major section two, which prohibits diluting somebody's ability to vote on the basis of race and other categories. In this case, the court is saying the way to ensure that we can satisfy the Voting Rights Act is not to make these racebased lines. it. As Jan said, we have a serious division in the court in the sense that we have Justice Kagan saying that this is the incorrect interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.

[00:05:04]And then in fact, when you think about this landmark piece of civil rights legislation, that one of the ways to ensure that you are complying with this legislation is to allow the use of race when you draw lines, when you draw these legislative lines. I think Jan was exactly right to point out this could have implications potentially not for the midterms but certainly going forward where you're going to see that states can draw these district lines I think using slightly different criteria and frankly being less worried about complying with section two because I think that the big takeaway here is that it's going to be hard to bring successful challenges under section two again of that landmark civil rights legislation, the Voting Rights Act.

[00:05:52]>> It's worth pointing out that section two, unlike other parts of the Voting Rights Act, were permanent and national in scope, some elements of the Voting Rights Act, which much more geographically specific to remedy past abuses in certain areas. Section two applied permanently and nationwide.

[00:06:07]That's why this is such an important ruling. Want to turn now to our chief White House correspondent, Nancy Cortis.

[00:06:12]Nancy Jan referred to some of the potential political implications of this. Pick it up from there.

[00:06:18]>> Sure. So, I think that there is a uh a concern or a question about whether this ruling is going to kick off uh chapter 2, if you will, of the gerrymandering arms race that we've been watching play out across the country since last year when President Trump first said that he thought that Texas should redraw its uh legislative maps. And the reason that that was controversial is because typically states only redraw their maps once every 10 years after census.

[00:06:44]>> We just hearing a CBS News special report. The Supreme Court voting 63, striking down Louisiana's new redistricting maps. Of course, much more of this coverage to come throughout the day.

[00:06:55]>> Right. They're striking it down based on race, saying race should not be a factor when you are drawing out these maps.

[00:07:02]though, Justice Elena Kagan saying in a very long descent that this could likely gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and many believing this could certainly have an impact on midterms. I said,