Supreme Court voting rights case: Breakdown, impact and reaction

Added: 2026-04-30

[00:00:00]As we reported earlier, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling Wednesday weakening the Voting Rights Act. The case was about a Louisiana congressional map that added a second majority black district to the state. The map was in response to a 2022 redistricting that consisted of five majority white districts and only one majority black despite nearly a third of Louisiana's population being black. In a six to3 decision, the court said the new map constituted racial gerrymandering. CBS News legal contributor and Loyola Law School, Professor Jessica Levenson joins me now. Can you explain to us the difference between political and racial gerrymandering in this case and why that impacted the court's decision?

[00:00:38]>> This is such an important question. And so the difference is, are you drawing lines to try and keep and maintain political power? That would be viewed as a political gerrymander. And what the court said a number of years ago is that it's essentially off limits when it comes to challenges that map lines amount to a political gerrymander. They say that's up to the political branches, let them sort it out. But it has been different when it comes to so-called racial gerrymandering where you draw district lines uh potentially to either have the intent or effect of diluting voting power on the basis of race. Now, what the court said today, you said, "How did this play into the court's decision?" The court essentially said that when Louisiana redrrew their district lines to try and comply with section two of the Voting Rights Act, that it considered race too much. That when it created that second majority minority district, that race was a predominant factor. and that that is a problem because under the 14th amendment equal protection clause, you can't consider race too much. That's why the bottom line here is that Louisiana's second map amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

[00:01:56]What that really means in plain English is that that second map violated the equal protection clause because you took race into account too much.

[00:02:04]>> Did this result surprise you? And what was the argument by the dissenting justices?

[00:02:10]So, I get to say it didn't surprise me for a couple of reasons. One is that um as we've talked about, the court has actually weakened in my view the protections of the Voting Rights Act or the application of the Voting Rights Act for years now. This has been happening for over a decade. The other is that the court has also consistently said we shouldn't take race into account in a variety of different areas. And one of those, for instance, is affirmative action. here today we see when it comes to drawing district lines the court is also saying don't take race into account to this extent. Um the other reason that this isn't a surprise is that frankly the court actually changed the question that was presented in this case. It heard this court excuse me it heard this case last term and then it asked for reargument on the issue that the court decided today. So, the court really gave us a ton of tea leaves and they left a lot of breadcrumbs and I don't think this is going to be a surprise. In answer to your final question about the disscent, the disscent said that this is a misreading of section two of the voting rights act that says you have to look not just at the effects of lines, excuse me, not just at the intent of lines, but also the effect. and that this essentially means it'll be almost impossible to bring a claim of racial gerrymandering un under that other part of the voting rights act section two.

[00:03:37]>> Jessica Levenson, thank you.

[00:03:40]>> CBS News election law expert and contributor David Becker joins me now.

[00:03:43]What is this change in Louisiana?

[00:03:46]>> Well, it means that the previous map that had one district for blacks is likely going to stand. It's um that again a state that's almost a third black is going to have uh one out of their six representatives elected by their black residents. Uh I I don't think there's going to be a lot of impact of this decision in the 2026 cycle because we're already in the primary season. It's going to be very difficult. Although you're already hearing calls from Republican legislators in some states to redistrict without any concern for what that does for voter confusion and the work of election officials who will need to resolve this. but >> redistrict and potentially push elections back, right?

[00:04:22]>> Well, I mean, the primary elections, they can't push the general election back. And so, that creates a real problem. I mean, frankly, Florida is already on the edge of being too late given uh how late they're redistricting, but their primary is not until August.

[00:04:36]States like Georgia, states like Alabama, those states have primaries that are happening in May. Georgians are literally voting in their primary under districts where candidates have already qualified, where the races are already on the ballots that are already printed.

[00:04:51]So, that's going to be very difficult. I hope politicians don't try to rush this.

[00:04:55]Um, but Jessica is also quite right. I mean, this is going to have a longstanding impact on the ability of minority voters to have representation where their votes are diluted. It's going to be virtually impossible. I think Justice Kagan is likely right unfortunately that um for minority voters to be able to demonstrate that a districts that were drawn to keep them out of power were done so for racial reasons which really puts at risk the whole intent behind those that 14th and 15th amendment protections which were enacted after reconstruction to give minority voters power.

[00:05:31]>> All right, David Becker, this is not the end. So we will be calling upon you again. Thank you.

[00:05:36]CBS News's chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford spoke to Louisiana Attorney General Liz Merurl about today's ruling and its impacts.

[00:05:44]>> I don't think it guts the Voting Rights Act. Not at all. In fact, I think it harmonizes the statute with the Constitution. And we said from the beginning when we drew our original map after the census in 2020, that we couldn't draw a second majority minority map without racial gerrymandering, that you couldn't do it without race predominating.

[00:06:04]Joining me now is Louisiana Democratic Congressman Troy Carter. Congressman, thank you for being here. Um, you had said in an earlier press conference with the Congressional Black Caucus, this tips the scales. Can you elaborate?

[00:06:18]>> Well, yes. It's a devastating blow to our democracy, to our very principle of having fair elections. um when you gut and I know the attorney general said it wasn't gutting, but it was when you give a preference and protection for uh partisan gerrymandering, but on the other hand, you make it next to impossible to defend racial discrimination in germandering. Uh you put your thumb on the scale either way.

[00:06:49]You say it's okay for you to gerrymander to pick a party favorite, but it's and you lessen the the rights and the opportunity to defend those who have been discriminated against. Uh next to impossible, as your previous speaker said, the the test now to prove racial discrimination is a a test that's next to impossible to prove, which puts us at a tremendous disadvantage. Louisiana is roughly 33% African-American. We now have two African-Americans serving in the United States Congress. Under this rule, under this ruling, theoretically, we could end up with no African-Americans representing in uh representing Louisiana in Congress.

[00:07:34]>> And you represent the second district was which was not involved in this case.

[00:07:37]But you also say this is bigger than the district, bigger than the state, bigger than your caucus. So, what are you and your colleagues planning to do? Well, it's bigger than it's bigger than Congress, too, because remember, this doesn't only affect Congress. This impacts school boards. This impacts state legislative seats. This impacts uh city councils. So, when you talk about the demise of section two of the voting rights act, it deals with germandering across the board and it takes away those protections against uh against discrimination. So the concern is while Louisiana is the epicenter of this because we are in fact Louisiana vala uh the reality is that this has impact for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus and districts throughout our country. Uh it's a major major blow to our voting rights act.

[00:08:31]>> Congressman Troy Carter, thank you for your time.