xxxxx
OCTOBER TERM, 2025
Syllabus
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
1
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS ET AL.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
WESTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
No. 24–109. Argued October 15, 2025—Decided April 29, 2026*
These cases concern whether Louisiana’s new congressional map is an
unconstitutional racial gerrymander. In 2022, after the State redrew
its congressional districts, a federal judge in Robinson v. Ardoin, 605
F. Supp. 3d 759 (MD La.), held that the 2022 map likely violated §2 of
the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 52 U. S. C. §10301 et seq., because it did
not include an additional majority-black district. But when the State
drew a new map, SB8, that contained such a district, the new map was
challenged as a racial gerrymander. A three-judge court in Callais v.
Landry, 732 F. Supp. 3d 574 (WD La.), held that SB8 violated the
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the State
appealed to this Court.
The parties originally briefed and argued this suit last Term, and
their arguments at that time highlighted problems in the existing body
of §2 case law. One problem resulted from the rule that in racial ger-
rymandering cases, unlike other cases involving claims of racial dis-
crimination, strict scrutiny is triggered only if race “predominated” in
the State’s decisionmaking process. Another problem stemmed from
the long-unresolved question whether compliance with the Voting
Rights Act provides a compelling reason that may justify the inten-
tional use of race in drawing legislative districts. For over 30 years,
the Court has simply assumed for the sake of argument that the an-
swer is yes. These and other problems convinced the Court that the
time had come to resolve whether compliance with the Voting Rights
Act can indeed provide a compelling reason for race-based districting.
——————
*Together with No. 24–110, Robinson et al. v. Callais et al., on appeal
from the same court.2 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Syllabus
Held: Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create
an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justi-
fied the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an uncon-
stitutional racial gerrymander. Pp. 17–36.
(a) The Constitution almost never permits a State to discriminate on
the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny. The
Court’s precedents have identified “only two compelling interests” that
can satisfy strict scrutiny: “avoiding imminent and serious risks to hu-
man safety in prisons,” and “remediating specific, identified instances
of past discrimination that violated the Constitution or a statute.” Stu-
dents for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard
College, 600 U. S. 181. The question presented is whether compliance
with §2 of the Voting Rights Act should be added to this very short list
of compelling interests. The Court now holds that compliance with §2,
as properly construed, can provide such an interest. A proper interpre-
tation of §2 requires examining the statutory text to understand what
it demands with respect to drawing legislative districts. Pp. 17–26.
(1) Under Section 2(a), the Court takes as a given that a legislative
districting map may constitute a “standard, practice, or procedure”
that may violate §2 if it “results in a denial or abridgement” of the right
to vote “on account of race or color.” Section 2(b) establishes that a
violation occurs when political processes are “not equally open to par-
ticipation by” members of a racial group “in that [they] have less op-
portunity than other members of the electorate to . . . elect represent-
atives of their choice.” The key concept is “less opportunity than other
members of the electorate,” which sets a baseline against which to as-
sess the opportunity of minority voters. That baseline—the oppor-
tunity that any given group of voters has to elect their candidate of
choice—depends on the voting preferences of other voters in the dis-
trict. For example, in a district where most voters prefer Democratic
candidates, a Republican voter in that district will have a low chance
of securing the election of his or her preferred candidate. The roster of
voters who end up in a given district depends, in turn, on the district-
ing criteria the State uses to draw a legislative map. Thus, the “oppor-
tunity” of these “members of the electorate” to contribute their votes to
a winning cause is whatever opportunity results from the application
of the State’s combination of permissible districting criteria. That is
what a randomly selected individual voter and group of voters can ex-
pect regarding their opportunity to elect their preferred candidate.
Under §2, a minority voter is entitled to nothing less and nothing more.
Pp. 19–22.
(2) This interpretation is the best reading of the statutory text and
ensures that §2 of the Voting Rights Act does not exceed Congress’s
authority under §2 of the Fifteenth Amendment, which confers onCite as: 608 U. S. ___ (2026)
3
Syllabus
Congress the “power to enforce [the Amendment] by appropriate legis-
lation.” As the Court has long held, the Fifteenth Amendment bars
only state action “ ‘motivated by discriminatory purpose.’ ” Reno v.
Bossier Parrish School Bd., 520 U. S. 471, 481. So a law that seeks to
enforce the Fifteenth Amendment by prohibiting mere disparate im-
pact would fail to enforce a right that the Amendment secures. That
is never “appropriate,” South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301,
308, because Congress cannot “enforce a constitutional right by chang-
ing what the right is,” City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S. 507, 519. For
this reason, the focus of §2 must be enforcement of the Fifteenth
Amendment’s prohibition on intentional racial discrimination. When
§2 of the Act is properly interpreted, it imposes liability only when cir-
cumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimina-
tion occurred. Properly understood, §2 thus does not intrude on States’
prerogative to draw districts based on nonracial factors, including to
achieve partisan advantage. In short, §2 imposes liability only when
the evidence supports a strong inference that the State intentionally
drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of
their race. Not only does this interpretation follow from the plain text
of §2, but it is consistent with the limited authority that the Fifteenth
Amendment confers. Pp. 22–26.
(b) This interpretation does not require abandonment of the frame-
work for evaluating §2 claims that the Court established in Thornburg
v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30. The Court need only update the framework
so it aligns with the statutory text and reflects important develop-
ments since the Court decided Gingles 40 years ago. Four historical
developments are of particular note. First, vast social change has oc-
curred throughout the country and particularly in the South, which
have made great strides in ending entrenched racial discrimination.
Second, a full-blown two-party system has emerged in the States
where §2 suits are most common, and there is frequently a correlation
between race and party preference. Third, in Rucho v. Common Cause,
588 U. S. 684, this Court held that partisan gerrymandering claims
are not justiciable in federal court, and this holding creates an incen-
tive for litigants to exploit §2 for partisan purposes by “repackag[ing]
a partisan-gerrymandering claim as a racial-gerrymandering claim,”
Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, 602 U. S.
1, 21. Fourth, the increased use and capabilities of computers in draw-
ing districts and creating illustrative maps means that a §2 plaintiff
can easily identify an alternative map that fully achieves all the State’s
legitimate goals while producing greater racial balance, if such a map
is possible. In light of these developments, the Court updates the Gin-
gles framework and realigns it with the text of §2 and constitutional
principles. Pp. 26–31.4 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Syllabus
(1) The first Gingles precondition is that a community of minority
voters must be sufficiently numerous and compact to constitute a ma-
jority in a reasonably configured district. While many §2 plaintiffs
have simply provided illustrative maps with their desired number of
majority-minority districts, such maps prove only that the State could
create an additional majority-minority district, not that the State’s
failure to do so violated §2 of the Voting Rights Act. To show the latter,
plaintiffs’ illustrative maps must satisfy two conditions: Plaintiffs can-
not use race as a districting criterion in drawing illustrative maps, and
illustrative maps must meet all the State’s legitimate districting ob-
jectives, including traditional districting criteria and the State’s spec-
ified political goals. Pp. 29–30.
(2) To satisfy the second and third preconditions—politically cohe-
sive voting by the minority and racial-bloc voting by the majority—the
plaintiffs must provide an analysis that controls for party affiliation,
showing that voters engage in racial-bloc voting that cannot be ex-
plained by partisan affiliation. P. 30.
(3) On the “totality of circumstances” inquiry, the focus must be
on evidence that has more than a remote bearing on what the Fifteenth
Amendment prohibits: present-day intentional racial discrimination
regarding voting. Discrimination that occurred some time ago and pre-
sent-day disparities characterized as ongoing “effects of societal dis-
crimination” are entitled to much less weight. Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U. S.
899, 909–910. Pp. 30–31.
(c) Nothing in Allen v. Milligan, 599 U. S. 1, dictates a different re-
sult. That case merely addressed whether Alabama’s novel eviden-
tiary standard required a change to existing §2 precedent. Allen did
not address whether “race-based redistricting” under §2 could “extend
indefinitely into the future” despite significant changes in conditions,
599 U. S., at 45 (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part), nor did it address
whether §2 plaintiffs must disentangle race from politics in proving
their case. Indeed, Allen did not address the Fourteenth Amendment
at all. But here, the decision before the Court is based on the Four-
teenth Amendment. Pp. 31–32.
(d) Under the updated Gingles framework, the facts of this suit eas-
ily require affirmance. Louisiana’s enactment of SB8 triggered strict
scrutiny because the State’s underlying goal was racial. The State con-
figured District 6 to achieve a black voting-age population over 50%
because the Robinson court held that §2 likely required the creation of
an additional majority-black district. The State’s intentional compli-
ance with the court’s demands constituted an “express acknowledg-
ment that race played a role in the drawing of district lines.” Alexan-
der, 602 U. S., at 8.
No compelling interest justifies SB8 because §2 did not require theCite as: 608 U. S. ___ (2026)
5
Syllabus
State to create a new majority-minority district. At every step of the
Gingles framework, the Robinson plaintiffs failed to prove their §2
case. On the first Gingles precondition, the Robinson plaintiffs did not
meet their burden because they did not provide an illustrative map
that met all the State’s nonracial goals, including the State’s political
goals. On the second and third Gingles preconditions, the Robinson
plaintiffs offered evidence that black and white voters consistently
supported different candidates, but their analysis did not control for
partisan preferences. And on the totality of circumstances, the Robin-
son plaintiffs failed to show an objective likelihood of intentional dis-
crimination, instead relying on historical evidence and evidence that
failed to disentangle race from politics. Pp. 32–35.
732 F. Supp. 3d 574, affirmed and remanded.
ALITO, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J.,
and THOMAS, GORSUCH, KAVANAUGH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. THOMAS,
J., filed a concurring opinion, in which GORSUCH, J., joined. KAGAN, J.,
filed a dissenting opinion, in which SOTOMAYOR and JACKSON, JJ., joined.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
1
Opinion of the Court
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of
Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543,
pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
Nos. 24–109 and 24–110
_________________
LOUISIANA, APPELLANT
24–109 v.
PHILLIP CALLAIS, ET AL.
PRESS ROBINSON, ET AL., APPELLANTS
24–110 v.
PHILLIP CALLAIS, ET AL.
ON APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR
THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
[April 29, 2026]
JUSTICE ALITO delivered the opinion of the Court.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 52 U. S. C.
§10301 et seq., was designed to enforce the Constitution—
not collide with it. Unfortunately, lower courts have some-
times applied this Court’s §2 precedents in a way that forces
States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that
the Constitution forbids.
This tension between §2 and the Constitution came to a
head when Louisiana redrew its congressional districts af-
ter the 2020 census. In 2022, a federal judge in the Middle
District of Louisiana held that the map adopted by the state
legislature likely violated §2 because it did not include an
additional majority-black district. But when the State drew
a new map that contained such a district, its new map was
challenged as a racial gerrymander. A three-judge court in
the Western District of Louisiana held that the new map2 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
violated the Equal Protection Clause, and the State ap-
pealed to this Court.
The parties originally briefed and argued this suit last
Term, and their arguments at that time highlighted prob-
lems in the existing body of §2 case law. One problem re-
sulted from the rule that in racial gerrymandering cases,
unlike other cases involving claims of racial discrimination,
see, e.g., Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Devel-
opment Corp., 429 U. S. 252, 265–266 (1977), strict scrutiny
is triggered only if race “predominated” in the State’s deci-
sionmaking process. In this suit, Louisiana adopted the
challenged map and created the second majority-black dis-
trict because it quite reasonably anticipated that, if it did
not do so, the Middle District of Louisiana would order the
use of a map with a differently configured second majority-
black district that would effectively oust an incumbent
whom the legislature sought to protect. Under our existing
case law, that situation posed the question whether race or
politics was the State’s “predominant” motivation.
Another problem stemmed from the long-unresolved
question whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act
provides a compelling reason that may justify the inten-
tional use of race in drawing legislative districts. For over
30 years, we have assumed for the sake of argument that
the answer is yes. See infra, at 9–11. And we have gone
further and assumed that it is enough if a State “‘ha[s] a
strong basis in evidence’” for thinking that the Voting
Rights Act requires race-based conduct. Cooper v. Harris,
581 U. S. 285, 292–293 (2017). But allowing race to play
any part in government decisionmaking represents a depar-
ture from the constitutional rule that applies in almost
every other context.
These and other problems convinced us that the time had
come to resolve whether compliance with the Voting Rights
Act can indeed provide a compelling reason for race-based
districting. We now answer that question: Compliance withCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
3
Opinion of the Court
§2, as properly construed, can provide such a reason. Cor-
rectly understood, §2 does not impose liability at odds with
the Constitution, and it should not have imposed liability
on Louisiana for its 2022 map. Compliance with §2 thus
could not justify the State’s use of race-based redistricting
here. The State’s attempt to satisfy the Middle District’s
ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional
racial gerrymander, and we therefore affirm the decision
below.
I
A
Ratified in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment provides that
the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State
on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
For many years afterward, however, States “heavily sup-
pressed” the right of black citizens to vote. Brnovich v.
Democratic National Committee, 594 U. S. 647, 655 (2021).
“States employed a variety of notorious methods, including
poll taxes, literacy tests, property qualifications, white pri-
maries, and grandfather clauses,” in a “blatant” effort to
suppress black voting. Id., at 655–656, and n. 1 (citing H. R.
Rep. No. 439, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 8, 11–13 (1965); S. Rep.
No. 162, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 3, pp. 4–5 (1965); brack-
ets and internal quotation marks omitted). Even “as late
as the mid-1960s, black registration and voting rates in
some States were appallingly low.” Brnovich, 594 U. S., at
656; see South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S. 301, 309–
315 (1966). In addition, States employed legislative dis-
tricting schemes to prevent the election of black candidates
and candidates that black voters preferred. See Alexander
v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, 602 U. S.
1, 35 (2024); Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U. S. 339, 341
(1960).4 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment authorizes Con-
gress to enact “appropriate legislation” to enforce the
Amendment’s protections, and in 1965 Congress invoked
that power to enact the Voting Rights Act. Brnovich, 594
U. S., at 656. “The Act and its amendments in the 1970s
specifically forbade some of the practices that had been
used to suppress black voting,” including literacy tests and
poll taxes. Ibid.; see 52 U. S. C. §10301; §§4(a), (c), 79 Stat.
438–439; §6, 84 Stat. 315; §102, 89 Stat. 400, as amended,
52 U. S. C. §§10303(a), (c), 10501 (prohibiting the denial of
the right to vote in any election for failure to pass a test
demonstrating literacy, educational achievement or
knowledge of any particular subject, or good moral charac-
ter); see also §10, 79 Stat. 442, as amended, 52 U. S. C.
§10306 (declaring poll taxes unlawful); §11, 79 Stat. 443, as
amended, 52 U. S. C. §10307 (prohibiting intimidation and
the refusal to allow or count votes). We upheld many of
these provisions in Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 316, 327–337.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in its original form
“closely tracked the language of the Amendment it was
adopted to enforce.” Brnovich, 594 U. S., at 656. At that
time, §2 stated simply that “[n]o voting qualification or pre-
requisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall
be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision
to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United
States to vote on account of race or color.” 79 Stat. 437.
In Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U. S. 55 (1980), the Court inter-
preted this language, and four Justices concluded in a plu-
rality opinion that “facially neutral voting practices violate
§2 only if motivated by a discriminatory purpose.” Brno-
vich, 594 U. S., at 658. Justice Stevens, who concurred in
the judgment, proposed a different but similarly demanding
standard. See Bolden, 446 U. S., at 90–94. Indeed, in his
view, a districting practice, even if motivated in part by
race, would not violate §2 so long as it was “supported by
valid and articulable justifications.” Id., at 91–92.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
5
Opinion of the Court
Bolden roused “‘an avalanche of criticism, both in the me-
dia and within the civil rights community.’” Allen v. Milli-
gan, 599 U. S. 1, 11 (2023) (quoting T. Boyd & S. Markman,
The 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act: A Legisla-
tive History, 40 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 1347, 1355 (1983)).
Critics argued that a focus on discriminatory intent, rather
than discriminatory effects, would defeat worthy claims be-
cause of the difficulty of proving intentional discrimination.
See 599 U. S., at 11.
Members of Congress evidently shared these concerns.
In 1982, shortly after Bolden, Congress sought to abrogate
that decision by amending §2. A House bill was “originally
passed . . . under a loose understanding that §2 would pro-
hibit all discriminatory ‘effects’ of voting practices, and that
intent would be ‘irrelevant,’” but “[t]his version met stiff re-
sistance in the Senate.” Mississippi Republican Executive
Comm. v. Brooks, 469 U. S. 1002, 1010 (1984) (Rehnquist,
J., dissenting) (quoting H. R. Rep. No. 97–227, p. 29 (1981)).
Critics worried that an effects test would lead to “man-
dat[ory] racial proportionality in elections,” a scenario “re-
garded by many as intolerable.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 12. The
House and Senate eventually compromised, and the final
product included both an effects test in §2(a) and a “robust
disclaimer against proportionality” in §2(b). Id., at 13.
This latter provision also specifies what a plaintiff must
establish to prove a §2 violation. The provision requires
consideration of the “totality of circumstances” in each case
and demands proof that the “political processes leading to
nomination or election in the State or political subdivision
are not equally open to participation” by members of a pro-
tected class “in that its members have less opportunity than
other members of the electorate to participate in the politi-
cal process and to elect representatives of their choice.” 52
U. S. C. §10301(b) (emphasis added). Congress took this
language almost verbatim from Justice White’s opinion for
the Court in White v. Regester, 412 U. S. 755 (1973), which6 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
involved a “vote dilution” claim, i.e., a claim that a district-
ing scheme impermissibly lessens the weight of the votes of
minority voters.
In White, the Court affirmed a judgment that Texas had
used two multimember electoral districts “invidiously to
cancel out or minimize the voting strength of racial groups.”
Id., at 765. According to White, a vote-dilution plaintiff had
to show that “the political processes leading to nomination
and election were not equally open to participation by the
group in question—that its members had less opportunity
than did other residents in the district to participate in the
political processes and to elect legislators of their choice.”
Id., at 766.
The decision in White did not say anything one way or
another about proof of discriminatory purpose or intent, but
the Court’s rationale rested on evidence that gave rise to an
obvious inference that the State had set out to prevent the
election of candidates preferred by minority voters. The
Texas districting scheme generally used single-member dis-
tricts but employed multimember districts in two parts of
the State where single-member districts might have re-
sulted in the election of minority candidates. The Court ob-
served that the use of multimember districts is not “neces-
sarily” or “per se” unconstitutional, but it recognized that
such districts can be employed to achieve discriminatory
ends. Id., at 765; see also Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U. S.
379, 389 (1971) (observing that a switch to at-large elec-
tions could be a “metho[d] to maintain white control of the
political process”); Allen v. State Bd. of Elections, 393 U. S.
544, 569 (1969) (explaining that a change to at-large voting
could nullify the ability of minority voters to elect their can-
didate of choice). The Court also cited strong evidence that
the legislature had done so in the case at hand. Writing at
a time when the Democratic Party was dominant in much
of Texas, the Court noted that a “white-dominated organi-
zation,” which had “effective control” over candidate slatingCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
7
Opinion of the Court
within that party, had engaged in “ ‘racial campaign tactics
in white precincts to defeat candidates who had the over-
whelming support of the black community,’” thereby “‘ef-
fectively exclud[ing]’” the black community “‘from partici-
pation in the Democratic primary selection process.’”
White, 412 U. S., at 766–767. The Court likewise cited
evidence that the legislature had “invidiously excluded
Mexican-Americans from effective participation in political
life, specifically in the election of representatives to the
Texas House of Representatives.” Id., at 769. Thus, White
presented a situation in which circumstantial evidence sug-
gested very strongly that the State had created multimem-
ber districts for the purpose of diluting minority votes.
A few years later, when Congress looked for language
that would abrogate Mobile v. Bolden’s interpretation of §2,
it selected terms that were nearly identical to language
used in White. The accompanying Report of the Senate Ju-
diciary Committee explained that the amendment’s pur-
pose was to repudiate Bolden and establish a new vote-
dilution test based on White. See S. Rep. No. 97–417, pp. 2,
15–16, 27 (1982).
B
This Court first construed the amended version of §2 in
Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30 (1986). Gingles con-
cerned a challenge to North Carolina’s multimember dis-
tricting scheme on the ground that it diluted the vote of
black citizens. Id., at 34–36. Gingles was decided at a time
when this Court often paid insufficient attention to the lan-
guage of statutory provisions, and Justice Brennan’s opin-
ion for the Court followed this pattern. Instead of analyzing
what the statute said, the opinion simply “quoted the text
of amended §2 and then jumped right to the Senate Judici-
ary Committee Report.” Brnovich, 594 U. S., at 667; see
Gingles, 478 U. S., at 42–46. Relying heavily on that Re-
port, the opinion set out three threshold requirements for8 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
proving a §2 vote-dilution claim, plus a nonexhaustive list
of factors to be considered in making a final decision as to
whether the State had violated §2. See id., at 44–45, 48–
51, 80.
To succeed in proving a §2 violation, Gingles taught, a
plaintiff must make four showings. First, the plaintiff must
show that the minority group in question is “sufficiently
large and [geographically] compact to constitute a majority
in a reasonably configured district.” Wisconsin Legislature
v. Wisconsin Elections Comm’n, 595 U. S. 398, 402 (2022)
(per curiam) (citing Gingles, 478 U. S., at 50–51). A district
is reasonably configured, we later explained, “if it comports
with traditional districting criteria, such as being contigu-
ous and reasonably compact.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 18. “Sec-
ond, the minority group must be able to show that it is po-
litically cohesive.” Gingles, 478 U. S., at 51. Third, “the
minority must be able to demonstrate that the white major-
ity votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it . . . to defeat the
minority’s preferred candidate.” Ibid. “Finally, a plaintiff
who demonstrates the three preconditions must also show,
based on the ‘totality of circumstances,’ that the political
process is not ‘equally open’ to minority voters.” Allen, 599
U. S., at 18 (quoting Gingles, 478 U. S., at 45–46).
C
In later cases, redistricting plans that States created to
comply with the Voting Rights Act were themselves chal-
lenged as racial gerrymanders. This Court approached
such cases by building on the framework from other racial-
discrimination cases under the Equal Protection Clause. In
those cases, if race played a role in a decision made by a
government actor, strict scrutiny applied. See Arlington
Heights, 429 U. S., at 265–266. Under this standard, the
government needed to assert a compelling interest that jus-
tified its use of race; and if the analysis progressed beyond
this point, the government had to show that its use of raceCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
9
Opinion of the Court
was narrowly tailored to vindicate that interest. See, e.g.,
Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows
of Harvard College, 600 U. S. 181, 206 (2023) (SFFA).
The Court modified this framework for racial gerryman-
dering cases. Although any use of race in government deci-
sionmaking generally triggers strict scrutiny, in gerryman-
dering cases a challenger must show that race was the
government’s predominant consideration. See Bush v.
Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 964 (1996) (plurality opinion). And in
cases where race predominated, States would sometimes
assert that compliance with the Voting Rights Act provided
a compelling interest justifying the use of race. Yet we
never decided whether compliance with the Act could con-
stitute a compelling interest. Instead, we repeatedly as-
sumed without deciding that the Voting Rights Act could
constitute a compelling interest because in all those cases,
the Act actually did not demand the State’s race-predomi-
nant districting. Thus, the States in those cases could not
satisfy strict scrutiny regardless of whether compliance
with the Voting Rights Act could provide a compelling in-
terest.
The first case in which the Court explicitly made this as-
sumption was Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 917–920
(1995),1 which concerned a majority-black district that was
designed to satisfy the Justice Department’s preclearance
demands under §5 of the Voting Rights Act. The Miller
Court first found that the legislature had “subordinated
traditional race-neutral districting principles, including but
not limited to compactness, contiguity, and respect for po-
litical subdivisions or communities defined by actual shared
interests, to racial considerations.” Id., at 916. For this
reason, the Court held, race had predominated in the crea-
tion of the new district, and the State had to “demonstrate
——————
1 Such an assumption may have been implicit in Shaw v. Reno, 509
U. S. 630, 653–656 (1993) (Shaw I).10 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
that its districting legislation [wa]s narrowly tailored to
achieve a compelling interest.” Id., at 920. The Court de-
clined to address “[w]hether or not in some cases compli-
ance with the [Voting Rights Act], standing alone, c[ould]
provide a compelling interest independent of any interest
in remedying past discrimination.” Id., at 921. Instead, the
Court explained that the “challenged district was not rea-
sonably necessary under a constitutional reading and ap-
plication” of the Voting Rights Act, so the State’s goal of
complying with the Act could not supply a compelling inter-
est. Ibid.
We repeated much the same analysis in Shaw v. Hunt,
517 U. S. 899, 908 (1996) (Shaw II), applying strict scrutiny
to a redistricting plan that a State crafted to comply with
both §2 and §5 of the Voting Rights Act. “[O]nce again,” we
did not reach the question “expressly left open” in Miller:
whether the Voting Rights Act could itself provide a com-
pelling interest to justify race-predominant districting. 517
U. S., at 911. After “assum[ing], arguendo, for the purpose
of resolving this suit, that compliance with §2 could be a
compelling interest,” we held that the plan failed strict
scrutiny because it was not reasonably required under a
constitutional reading and application of the Voting Rights
Act. Id., at 915.
Likewise, in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Ala-
bama, 575 U. S. 254, 259 (2015), we applied strict scrutiny
to a race-predominant districting plan that the State had
created for two purposes: first, to “come close to a one-per-
son, one-vote ideal,” and second, to “ensure compliance”
with §5 of the Voting Rights Act. We held that, even if the
Voting Rights Act could provide a compelling interest, the
map did not satisfy strict scrutiny because it was not re-
quired by the Act. Id., at 277. Once again, we left open
whether compliance with the Act “remain[ed] a compelling
interest.” Id., at 279.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
11
Opinion of the Court
In Cooper, 581 U. S., at 301, we continued our “long”-
standing assumption that “complying with the VRA is a
compelling interest.” Again, we did not need to resolve this
question because a constitutional reading and application
of the Act did not require the district at issue. Id., at 306.
And again, in Wisconsin Legislature, we once more “as-
sumed that complying with the [Voting Rights Act] is a com-
pelling interest.” 595 U. S., at 401. But because the Wis-
consin Supreme Court had not properly analyzed whether
the Act required the map at issue, we remanded for the
court to “undertake a full strict-scrutiny analysis.” Id., at
406. This was the legal framework in place when the law-
suits involving Louisiana’s congressional districts were
filed and litigated in the lower courts.
II
As noted earlier, the underlying litigation in this suit re-
sulted from Louisiana’s response to the population changes
disclosed by the 2020 census. The subsequent reapportion-
ment of House seats among the States left Louisiana with
the same number of seats—six—that it had previously been
allocated, but due to shifts in population, the State needed
to recalibrate its districts.
Figure 1. Louisiana’s map from 2013–202212 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
In 2022, Louisiana enacted a new map, “HB1,” that
closely resembled its immediate predecessor:
Figure 2. HB1, enacted in 2022
HB1, like its predecessor, included only one district in
which black voters were a majority of the voting-age popu-
lation. (In the above maps, it is the bat-shaped District 2
that includes much of New Orleans, blue in Figure 1 and
yellow in Figure 2.) As soon as HB1 was enacted, lawsuits
were filed in the Middle District of Louisiana asserting that
the map violated the Voting Rights Act by “‘packing’ large
numbers of Black voters into a single majority-Black con-
gressional district . . . and ‘cracking’ the remaining Black
voters among the other five districts.” Robinson v. Ardoin,
605 F. Supp. 3d 759, 768 (2022). After the suit was filed,
the Robinson court issued a lengthy opinion concluding that
HB1 likely violated the Voting Rights Act by failing to in-
clude a second majority-black district. The court thus en-
tered a preliminary injunction requiring Louisiana toCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
13
Opinion of the Court
implement a new map before the 2022 election, which was
less than six months away. Id., at 856.
Louisiana objected to the decision and promptly ap-
pealed. But because of circumstances outside the State’s
control, its appeal ended up in limbo. This Court granted
certiorari before judgment and held the case pending a de-
cision in Allen. Nearly a year later, after deciding Allen,
the Court dismissed the petition as improvidently granted
and remanded the case to the Fifth Circuit to consider Lou-
isiana’s appeal in the ordinary course. By that time, the
2022 election had passed, and the urgency that had justi-
fied the preliminary injunction was no longer present. In a
tentatively worded opinion, the Fifth Circuit held that the
Robinson District Court’s decision “was valid when it was
issued” but that the preliminary injunction was no longer
needed. Robinson v. Ardoin, 86 F. 4th 574, 599–600 (2023).
In the absence of urgency, the Fifth Circuit remanded the
case to the District Court with instructions to give Louisi-
ana time to draw a new map. If Louisiana failed to do so,
the Fifth Circuit suggested, the District Court could pro-
ceed with a trial on the merits and, if needed, remedial pro-
ceedings. Id., at 601–602.
After the Fifth Circuit’s remand, Louisiana did not have
many options. In the Robinson decision, the District Court
held that the plaintiffs were “likely to prevail” on their
claim that the Voting Rights Act demanded the creation of
a second majority-black district. 605 F. Supp. 3d, at 851.
So if Louisiana refused to adopt such a map, the District
Court would likely draw one and mandate its use. Wishing
to avoid that outcome, Louisiana decided to draw its own
map. After a deliberative process, Louisiana enacted the
map at issue in this suit: SB8.14 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
Figure 3. SB8
SB8 retains the original majority-minority district from
HB1 (above in yellow). It then adds an additional majority-
minority district, District 6 (above in green). To attain a
majority-black voting-age population, District 6 connects
black populations from Baton Rouge and Lafayette (in the
southcentral region of the State) with the black population
in Shreveport (in the far northwest of the State). SB8 dif-
fered from the illustrative maps—shown below—on which
the District Court relied in Robinson:Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
Opinion of the Court
15
Figure 4. Robinson Court’s Illustrative Maps
These illustrative maps also include a second majority-
minority district, but one with very different boundaries
(shown in blue in the top four maps and in green in the16 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
bottom two maps). This district connects largely urban
black communities in Baton Rouge and Lafayette with more
rural black communities in the northeast corner of the
State. By contrast, SB8’s District 6 connects the Baton
Rouge and Lafayette black populations with the distant
black population in Shreveport, in the northwest. Louisi-
ana adopted this scheme, rather than the one used in the
Robinson illustrative maps, because it protects the Repub-
lican incumbents the State considered most important:
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, House Majority
Leader Steve Scalise, and Appropriations Committee mem-
ber Julia Letlow. See Brief for Appellant in No. 24–109, pp.
13–14, 17.
Not long after SB8 was enacted, another lawsuit was
filed, this time in the Western District of Louisiana. A
group of plaintiffs (the Callais plaintiffs) asserted that SB8,
and specifically District 6, was a racial gerrymander that
violated the Equal Protection Clause. The plaintiffs from
Robinson intervened in the litigation, seeking to defend
Louisiana’s decision to draw a second majority-minority
district. Because the Callais plaintiffs challenged “the con-
stitutionality of the apportionment of congressional dis-
tricts,” a District Court of three judges was convened to
hear the suit. 28 U. S. C. §2284(a). The court held a 3-day
preliminary injunction hearing, which was consolidated
with a trial on the merits.
Observing that SB8’s “second majority-minority district
. . . stretches some 250 miles from Shreveport in the north-
west corner of the state to Baton Rouge in southeast Loui-
siana, slicing through metropolitan areas to scoop up pock-
ets of predominantly Black populations from Shreveport,
Alexandria, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge,” the court con-
cluded that the map effected a racial gerrymander that “vi-
olates the Equal Protection Clause.” Callais v. Landry, 732
F. Supp. 3d 574, 582, 588 (WD La. 2024). Judge Stewart of
the Fifth Circuit dissented. See id., at 614. The State ofCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
17
Opinion of the Court
Louisiana and the Robinson intervenors appealed the deci-
sion directly to this Court, and the Court noted probable ju-
risdiction. 604 U. S. 1007 (2024). See 28 U. S. C. §1253.
After an initial round of briefing and argument last Term,
the Court restored these cases to the calendar for reargu-
ment this Term. See 606 U. S. 923 (2025). We ordered sup-
plemental briefing on the following question: “Whether the
State’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority
congressional district violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth
Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.” 606 U. S. 993
(2025). And because the State’s intentional creation of a
second majority-minority district had been prompted by an
order suggesting that such a district is required by the Vot-
ing Rights Act, our question necessarily implicated the cor-
rectness of our longstanding assumption that compliance
with the Voting Rights Act may justify what the Constitu-
tion generally condemns: the use of race as a basis for gov-
ernment action. This question was pending in several
lower-court cases, but in light of the potential impact of
those cases on upcoming elections, we concluded that reso-
lution of the question in this suit was appropriate.
III
A
In considering whether the Constitution permits the in-
tentional use of race to comply with the Voting Rights Act,
we start with the general rule that the Constitution almost
never permits the Federal Government or a State to dis-
criminate on the basis of race. Such discrimination triggers
strict scrutiny, and our precedents have identified “only two
compelling interests” that can satisfy that standard. SFFA,
600 U. S., at 207. One compelling interest, not relevant
here, is “avoiding imminent and serious risks to human
safety in prisons, such as a race riot.” Ibid.; see Johnson v.
California, 543 U. S. 499, 512–513 (2005). The only other
compelling interest we have found is “remediating specific,18 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
identified instances of past discrimination that violated the
Constitution or a statute.” SFFA, 600 U. S., at 207.
To “rise to the level of a compelling state interest,” an ef-
fort to remediate past discrimination “must satisfy two con-
ditions.” Shaw II, 517 U. S., at 909. “First, the discrimina-
tion must be ‘identified discrimination.’” Ibid. (quoting
Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 499, 500, 505,
507, 509 (1989)). In other words, the State or Federal Gov-
ernment must identify the specific instances of past dis-
crimination that it aims to remediate and, in light of that
specification, must “‘determine the precise scope of the in-
jury it seeks to remedy.’” 517 U. S., at 909 (quoting Croson,
488 U. S., at 498 (opinion for the Court)). The States and
Federal Government have no compelling interest in gener-
ally remediating “past discrimination in a particular indus-
try or region” or “the effects of societal discrimination.” 517
U. S., at 909–910. Second, after identifying the specific in-
stance of discrimination, “the institution that makes the ra-
cial distinction must have . . . a ‘strong basis in evidence’ to
conclude that [its] remedial action [is] necessary.” Id., at
910 (quoting Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267,
277 (1986)).
“Our acceptance of race-based state action has been rare
for a reason.” SFFA, 600 U. S., at 208. “‘Distinctions be-
tween citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their
very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are
founded upon the doctrine of equality.’” Ibid. (quoting Rice
v. Cayetano, 528 U. S. 495, 517 (2000)). And in redistrict-
ing, “where the State assumes from a group of voters’ race
that they ‘think alike, share the same political interests,
and will prefer the same candidates at the polls,’ it engages
in racial stereotyping at odds with equal protection man-
dates.” Miller, 515 U. S., at 920 (quoting Shaw I, 509 U. S.
630, 647 (1993)).
The question before us now is whether compliance with
the Voting Rights Act should be added to our very short listCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
19
Opinion of the Court
of compelling interests that can justify racial discrimina-
tion. To answer that question, we must understand exactly
what §2 of the Voting Rights Act demands with respect to
the drawing of legislative districts. We therefore turn to
the text of that provision.
B
1
As amended in 1982, §2 states:
“(a) No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting
or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or
applied by any State or political subdivision in a man-
ner which results in a denial or abridgement of the
right of any citizen of the United States to vote on ac-
count of race or color . . . as provided in subsection (b).
“(b) A violation of subsection (a) is established if,
based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that
the political processes leading to nomination or election
in the State or political subdivision are not equally
open to participation by members of a class of citizens
protected by subsection (a) in that its members have
less opportunity than other members of the electorate
to participate in the political process and to elect rep-
resentatives of their choice. The extent to which mem-
bers of a protected class have been elected to office in
the State or political subdivision is one circumstance
which may be considered: Provided, That nothing in
this section establishes a right to have members of a
protected class elected in numbers equal to their pro-
portion in the population.” 52 U. S. C. §10301.
This is not the easiest language to parse, and we will
therefore break it down in steps. Beginning with subsection
(a), we take as given that a legislative districting map may
constitute a “standard, practice, or procedure.” If that were
not so, there would have been no statutory basis for any of20 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
our §2 vote-dilution cases. See Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S.
874, 895–896 (1994) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment).
Therefore, subsection (a) means that a districting map may
run afoul of §2 if it “results in a denial or abridgement” of
the right to vote “on account of race or color.”
With that established, subsection (b) explains when such
a denial or abridgment occurs: when “the political processes
leading to nomination or election” are “not equally open to
participation by” members of a racial group of voters “in
that [they] have less opportunity than other members of the
electorate to . . . elect representatives of their choice.” §2(b).
In this complicated verbal formulation, the key concept
for present purposes is “less opportunity than other mem-
bers of the electorate to . . . elect representatives of their
choice.” Ibid. This language sets a baseline against which
to assess the opportunity of minority voters: the “oppor-
tunity” that “other members of the electorate” have “to
elect” their preferred candidates. To understand this base-
line, we must nail down the meaning of three terms: “less
opportunity,” “other members of the electorate,” and “elect.”
In isolation, “opportunity” could refer to either a desired
outcome or a chance to achieve that outcome. As used in
§2(b), however, “opportunity” must mean a chance to
achieve a desired result, because the Voting Rights Act does
not guarantee equal outcomes. See White, 412 U. S., at
765–766. Accordingly, “less opportunity” must mean a
lesser chance. In ordinary usage, “less opportunity” often
takes on such meaning. One might say, for example, that
men under 6 feet tall have less opportunity to play in the
NBA than those who stand at least 6 feet 7 inches (the cur-
rent median).
The next term—“other members of the electorate”—spec-
ifies the comparator to be used in determining whether the
group protected by subsection (a) has suffered or is threat-
ened with suffering “less opportunity . . . to elect represent-
atives of their choice.” In conceptualizing the members ofCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
21
Opinion of the Court
this comparator group, we may think of a randomly selected
member of the electorate who has particular voting prefer-
ences, or we may think of a randomly selected group of vot-
ers who share certain voting preferences. These voting
preferences may be based on a candidate’s party affiliation,
ideology, stance on a particular policy issue, personal cha-
risma, or some other characteristic or set of characteristics.
But whatever they are, the situation of these randomly se-
lected voters must be compared with that of minority voters
alleged to have suffered vote dilution.
This brings us to the final term: “to elect.” As used in
§2(b), this term must refer to the achievement of electoral
victory by casting a ballot.
Putting all these terms together, the baseline is the
chance enjoyed by nonminority voters to secure the election
of their preferred candidates. What, then, is the chance
that any given nonminority voter or group of nonminority
voters has to secure the election of a preferred candidate?
The answer to this question depends on the voting prefer-
ences of other voters in the district. For example, in a dis-
trict where most voters prefer Democratic candidates, a Re-
publican voter in that district will have a low chance of
securing the election of his or her preferred candidate. But
that chance would be substantially higher if the district
were instead filled with voters who prefer Republican can-
didates. The roster of voters who end up in a given district
depends, in turn, on the districting criteria used by the
State in drawing a legislative map.
If a districting map is produced by computer, as is gener-
ally the case today, we may think of all the parameters in
the algorithm that the mapmaker uses. One necessary pa-
rameter would be the number of districts required by law,
and another would have to be a range of inter-district pop-
ulation variations that is small enough to comply with the
one-person, one-vote requirement. The algorithm might
then go on to lay out and assign priorities to whatever22 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
additional permissible criteria the legislature chooses to
use. For example, the legislature might want to minimize
changes in the prior map, avoid districts with discontiguous
territory, and avoid splitting counties or municipalities. It
might impose a certain standard of compactness, aim to
protect some or all incumbents, or promote the prospects of
a particular political party. When this algorithm is used,
the map it produces may place a particular voter or group
of voters in a district in which a majority generally agrees,
generally disagrees, or only sometimes agrees with their
voting preferences. But in any event, the “opportunity” of
these “members of the electorate” to contribute their votes
to a winning cause is whatever opportunity results from the
application of the State’s combination of permissible crite-
ria.
That is what our randomly selected individual voter and
group of voters can expect regarding their opportunity to
elect a preferred candidate. And under §2, a minority voter
is entitled to nothing less and nothing more.
2
Not only is this the best reading of the statutory text, but
it also ensures that §2 of the Voting Rights Act does not ex-
ceed Congress’s authority under §2 of the Fifteenth Amend-
ment. That provision confers the “power to enforce [the
Amendment] by appropriate legislation.” Thus, to lie
within Congress’s authority, §2 of the Voting Rights Act
must “effectuate by ‘appropriate’ measures the constitu-
tional prohibition” in §1 of the Fifteenth Amendment. Kat-
zenbach, 383 U. S., at 308.
Our Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment jurisprudence
delineates what constitutes “appropriate” legislation in the
sense relevant here. See City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U. S.
507, 518 (1997) (stating that Congress has “parallel power
to enforce the provisions” of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments). In legislation enforcing these Amendments,Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
23
Opinion of the Court
“[t]here must be a congruence and proportionality between
the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means
adopted to that end.” Id., at 520.
As the Court has long held, the Fifteenth Amendment
bars only state action “‘motivated by a discriminatory pur-
pose.’” Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 520 U. S. 471,
481 (1997) (quoting Mobile, 446 U. S., at 62). So a law that
seeks to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment by prohibiting
mere disparate impact would fail to enforce a right that the
Amendment secures. That is never “appropriate,” Katzen-
bach, 383 U. S., at 308, because Congress cannot “enforce a
constitutional right by changing what the right is,” City of
Boerne, 521 U. S., at 519.
For this reason, the focus of §2 must be enforcement of
the Fifteenth Amendment’s prohibition on intentional ra-
cial discrimination. When §2 is properly interpreted in the
way we have outlined, it is sufficiently congruent with and
proportional to the Amendment’s prohibition. While that
interpretation does not demand a finding of intentional dis-
crimination, it imposes liability only when the circum-
stances give rise to a strong inference that intentional dis-
crimination occurred. Suppose, for example, that the
application of a State’s districting algorithm yields numer-
ous maps with districts in which the members of a minority
group constitute a majority, and suppose that the State can-
not provide a legitimate reason for rejecting all those maps
and eliminating all majority-minority districts. In such a
situation, the inference of racial motivation is strong, and
§2 of the Fifteenth Amendment permits the imposition of
liability without demanding that the courts engage in the
fraught enterprise of attempting to determine whether the
state legislature as an institution, as opposed to certain in-
dividual members or the State’s hired mapmaker, was mo-
tivated by race.
Only when understood this way does §2 of the Voting
Rights Act properly fit within Congress’s Fifteenth24 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
Amendment enforcement power. See, e.g., I. N. S. v. St.
Cyr, 533 U. S. 289, 299–300 (2001) (“[I]f an otherwise ac-
ceptable construction of a statute would raise serious con-
stitutional problems, and where an alternative interpreta-
tion of the statute is ‘fairly possible,’ we are obligated to
construe the statute to avoid such problems” (citation omit-
ted)). By contrast, interpreting §2 of the Voting Rights Act
to outlaw a map solely because it fails to provide a sufficient
number of majority-minority districts would create a right
that the Amendment does not protect. And such an inter-
pretation would run headlong into the Act’s express dis-
claimer against racial proportionality.
Properly understood, §2 thus does not intrude on States’
prerogative to draw districts based on nonracial factors.
“Redistricting constitutes a traditional domain of state leg-
islative authority.” Alexander, 602 U. S., at 7. The Consti-
tution imposes some important restrictions on the States’
exercise of this power, but they are otherwise free to draw
districts as they please. We have held that they may use
traditional districting factors such as “compactness, conti-
guity,” “maintaining the integrity of political subdivisions,
preserving the core of existing districts,” and protecting in-
cumbents. Bush, 517 U. S., at 964; Miller, 515 U. S., at 906,
916. Nothing in the Constitution requires States to heed
these criteria, of course, and the desirability of some of
these criteria might be disputed. But because they are not
forbidden by the Constitution, it is up to each State to de-
cide what weight, if any, they warrant.
The same is true with respect to the drawing of districts
to achieve partisan advantage. Disapproval of partisan ger-
rymandering dates back to the founding. See Rucho v.
Common Cause, 588 U. S. 684, 696–697 (2019). But parti-
san gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in federal
court. Id., at 718. “Federal judges have no license to real-
locate political power between the two major political par-
ties, with no plausible grant of authority in theCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
25
Opinion of the Court
Constitution, and no legal standards to limit and direct
their decisions.” Ibid. Thus, in considering the constitu-
tionality of a districting scheme, courts must treat partisan
advantage like any other race-neutral aim: a constitution-
ally permissible criterion that States may rely on as de-
sired.
For this reason, as we have repeatedly made clear, when
a State defends a districting scheme on the ground that it
was drawn for partisan purposes, plaintiffs have a “‘spe-
cial’” burden to overcome. Alexander, 602 U. S., at 9 (quot-
ing Cooper, 581 U. S., at 308). “To prevail,” the plaintiff
“must ‘disentangle race from politics’ by proving ‘that the
former drove a district’s lines.’” 602 U. S., at 9 (quoting
Cooper, 581 U. S., at 308). “That means, among other
things, ruling out the competing explanation that political
considerations dominated the legislature’s redistricting ef-
forts. If either politics or race could explain a district’s con-
tours, the plaintiff has not cleared its bar.” 602 U. S., at 9–
10; see Easley v. Cromartie, 532 U. S. 234, 258 (2001)
(Cromartie II) (rejecting a racial gerrymandering claim
when the plaintiffs failed to show “that the legislature could
have achieved its legitimate political objectives in alterna-
tive ways that are comparably consistent with traditional
districting principles”).
A plaintiff may carry its disentanglement burden by of-
fering an alternative map that achieves all the State’s ob-
jectives—including partisan advantage and any of the
State’s other political goals—at least as well as the State’s
map. See Alexander, 602 U. S., at 10; Cromartie II, 532
U. S., at 258. Today, §2 litigants almost always have the
wherewithal to proffer such a map if there is one to be
found. See Abbott v. League of United Latin American Cit-
izens, 607 U. S. ___ (2025) (holding that the lack of an alter-
native map merits a “dispositive or near-dispositive adverse
inference” against a racial-gerrymandering plaintiff ); Alex-
ander, 602 U. S., at 10 (“[A]ny plaintiff with a strong case26 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
has had every incentive to produce such an alternative
map”); see also Allen, 599 U. S., at 23 (observing that “mod-
ern computer technology” allows challengers to “generate
millions of possible districting maps for a given State”). But
if a §2 plaintiff cannot disentangle race from the State’s
race-neutral considerations, including politics, then §2 can-
not impose liability.
In short, §2 imposes liability only when the evidence sup-
ports a strong inference that the State intentionally drew
its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity be-
cause of their race. Not only does this interpretation follow
from the plain text of §2, but it is consistent with the limited
authority that the Fifteenth Amendment confers.
C
This interpretation of §2 does not require abandonment
of the Gingles framework. We need only update the frame-
work so it aligns with the statutory text and reflects im-
portant developments since we decided Gingles 40 years
ago. Four historical developments are of particular note.
First, vast social change has occurred throughout the
country and particularly in the South, where many §2 suits
arise. As this Court has recognized, “things have changed
dramatically” in the decades since the passage of the Voting
Rights Act. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U. S. 529, 547
(2013). At the time of the Act’s passage, the Nation had
faced nearly a century of “entrenched racial discrimination
in voting, ‘an insidious and pervasive evil which had been
perpetuated in certain parts of our country through unre-
mitting and ingenious defiance of the Constitution.’” Id., at
535 (quoting Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 309). But the Voting
Rights Act led to “great strides” in the ensuing decades:
“voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registra-
tion and turnout due to race were erased, and African-
Americans attained political office in record numbers.” 570
U. S., at 549, 553. By 2004, the racial gap in voterCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
27
Opinion of the Court
registration and turnout had largely disappeared, with mi-
norities registering and voting at levels that sometimes sur-
passed the majority. Id., at 547–548. Black voters now par-
ticipate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the
electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white vot-
ers in two of the five most recent Presidential elections na-
tionwide and in Louisiana. See Supp. Brief for United
States as Amicus Curiae 13 (citing Dept. of Commerce, Cen-
sus Bureau, Voting and Registration Tables (Election of
Nov. 2024) (Apr. 2025)).
Second, a full-blown two-party system has emerged in the
States where §2 suits are most common. Gingles arose in
the context of a one-party system in which black and white
voters had starkly different voting patterns despite their af-
filiation within the same party. 478 U. S., at 59. In the
area involved in Gingles, an overwhelming majority of
white voters did not vote for any black candidate in the
Democratic party primary elections, which for all practical
purposes selected the candidates who would ultimately ob-
tain office. Ibid. And in general elections, white voters in
heavily Democratic areas often ranked black candidates
last among Democrats. Ibid. Such intra-party disparities
showed that black voters had less opportunity to elect their
preferred candidate because of their race, not because of
their partisan affiliation.
When the vast majority of voters, regardless of race, fa-
vors the same political party, a map that is disadvanta-
geous for members of one racial group cannot be explained
on the ground that it was drawn to favor a particular polit-
ical party. But in a State where both parties have substan-
tial support and where race is often correlated with party
preference, a litigant can easily exploit §2 for partisan pur-
poses by “repackag[ing] a partisan-gerrymandering claim
as a racial-gerrymandering claim.” Alexander, 602 U. S., at
21.28 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
That brings us to the third significant post-Gingles devel-
opment: this Court’s decision in Rucho. In that decision, we
held that claims of partisan gerrymandering are not justi-
ciable in federal court. See 588 U. S., at 704–710. The up-
shot of Rucho was that, as far as federal law is concerned,
a state legislature may use partisan advantage as a factor
in redistricting. And litigants cannot circumvent that rule
by dressing their political-gerrymandering claims in racial
garb. Imposing liability “based on the racial effects of a po-
litical gerrymander in a jurisdiction in which race and par-
tisan preference are very closely correlated . . . would, if ac-
cepted, provide a convenient way for future litigants and
lower courts to sidestep our holding in Rucho that partisan-
gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in federal court.”
Alexander, 602 U. S., at 21. “Instead of claiming that a
State impermissibly set a target Republican-Democratic
breakdown, a plaintiff could simply reverse-engineer the
partisan data into racial data and argue that the State im-
permissibly set a particular [racial] target. Our decisions
cannot be evaded with such ease.” Ibid.
The fourth significant development since Gingles is the
increased use and capabilities of computers in drawing dis-
tricts and creating illustrative maps. With “modern com-
puter technology” at the ready, §2 plaintiffs invariably in-
voke the assistance of experts who can generate
thousands—or even millions—of maps. Allen, 599 U. S., at
23; see id., at 33, 36 (involving more than 2 million expert-
generated maps). Computer algorithms can “easily con-
tro[l] for partisan preferences” and “other redistricting fac-
tors such as compactness and county splits.” Alexander,
602 U. S., at 25. With the advent of such technology, if it is
possible to identify an alternative map that fully achieves
all the State’s legitimate goals while producing “‘greater ra-
cial balance,’” then a §2 plaintiff can easily do so. Id., at
34–35 (quoting Cromartie II, 532 U. S., at 258).Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
29
Opinion of the Court
In light of these significant developments, it is appropri-
ate to update the Gingles framework and realign it with the
text of §2 and constitutional principles.
1. First Gingles Precondition
The first Gingles precondition is that a community of mi-
nority voters must be sufficiently numerous and compact to
constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district. To
satisfy this precondition, many §2 plaintiffs have simply
provided illustrative maps with their desired number of
majority-minority districts. E.g., Allen, 599 U. S., at 20.
Such maps, however, are not alone sufficient. They prove
only that the State could create an additional majority-mi-
nority district, not that the State’s failure to do so violated
§2 of the Voting Rights Act. To make the latter showing,
plaintiffs’ illustrative maps must satisfy two conditions.
First, in drawing illustrative maps, plaintiffs cannot use
race as a districting criterion. If a plaintiff can produce an
additional majority-minority district only by using race—a
process that would be unconstitutional if a State engaged
in such mapmaking, see Alexander, 602 U. S., at 6—that
illustrative map sheds no light on whether the State acted
unconstitutionally by not adopting such a map. Thus, an
illustrative map in which race was used has no value in
proving a §2 plaintiff ’s case.
Second, illustrative maps must meet all the State’s legit-
imate districting objectives, including traditional district-
ing criteria and the State’s specified political goals. If the
State’s aims in drawing a map include a target partisan dis-
tribution of voters, a specific margin of victory for certain
incumbents, or any other goal not prohibited by the Consti-
tution, the plaintiffs’ illustrative maps must achieve these
goals just as well. If not, the plaintiffs would fail to demon-
strate that the State’s chosen map was driven by racial con-
siderations rather than permissible aims. Only by meeting
all the State’s legitimate objectives can the illustrative30 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
maps help to “disentangle race” from politics and other con-
stitutionally permissible considerations. Ibid.
2. Second and Third Gingles Preconditions
To satisfy the second and third preconditions—politically
cohesive voting by the minority and racial-bloc voting by
the majority—the plaintiffs must provide an analysis that
controls for party affiliation. In other words, they must
show that voters engage in racial bloc voting that cannot be
explained by partisan affiliation. This is, once again, criti-
cal for “disentangl[ing] race and politics.” Alexander, 602
U. S., at 6.
The facts of Gingles afford a good example of how a §2
plaintiff can properly meet these preconditions. There, as
discussed, black and white voters had dramatically differ-
ent voting patterns within the Democratic party. 478 U. S.,
at 59. This type of intra-party racial-bloc voting pattern
helps to demonstrate that the minority plaintiffs have “less
opportunity” than their majority counterparts because of
race, not just because of partisan affiliation. 52 U. S. C.
§10301(b). By contrast, simply pointing to inter-party ra-
cial polarization proves nothing, because “‘a jurisdiction
may engage in constitutional political gerrymandering,
even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen
to be black Democrats and even if the State were conscious
of that fact.’” Alexander, 602 U. S., at 9 (quoting Hunt v.
Cromartie, 526 U. S. 541, 551 (1999)).
3. Totality of Circumstances
Last, the “totality of circumstances” inquiry must focus
on evidence that has more than a remote bearing on what
the Fifteenth Amendment prohibits: present-day inten-
tional racial discrimination regarding voting.
Discrimination that occurred some time ago, as well as
present-day disparities that are characterized as the ongo-
ing “effects of societal discrimination,” are entitled to muchCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
31
Opinion of the Court
less weight. Shaw II, 517 U. S., at 909–910. Far more ger-
mane are “current data” and “‘current political conditions’”
that shed light on current intentional discrimination.
Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 552–553 (quoting Northwest
Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U. S.
193, 203 (2009)). “[I]n large part because of the Voting
Rights Act[,] . . . our Nation has made great strides” in elim-
inating racial discrimination in voting. Shelby County, 570
U. S., at 548–549. And if, as a result of this progress, it is
hard to find pertinent evidence relating to intentional pre-
sent-day voting discrimination, that is cause for celebra-
tion.
D
Nothing in Allen dictates a result that differs from the
one we reach today. The decision in that case was based on
the State of Alabama’s specific argument that its “race-
neutral benchmark” was “necessary in any redistricting
case.” Brief for Appellants in Allen v. Milligan, O. T. 2022,
Nos. 21–1086 etc., pp. 43–44 (Brief for Alabama). Alabama
argued that deriving this benchmark—the “median or av-
erage number of majority-minority districts” in a race-blind
“multimillion-map set,” Allen, 599 U. S., at 23—required
“computer simulations that are technically complicated, ex-
pensive to produce, and available to ‘[o]nly a small cadre of
university researchers [that] have the resources and exper-
tise to run’ them,” id., at 36 (quoting Brief for United States
as Amicus Curiae 28). Nonetheless, the State contended
that its race-neutral benchmark was “the only plausible
test” to ensure that §2 stays within “constitutional guard-
rails.” Brief for Alabama 44, 75. We rejected that “single-
minded view.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 26. Allen, in short, was
about whether Alabama’s novel evidentiary standard re-
quired a change to our existing §2 precedent. See Tr. of
Oral Arg. 8–9. It did not.32 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
Allen did not address the central issue here. We had no
occasion in Allen to confront the presumption that compli-
ance with §2 may serve as a compelling interest for a State
to satisfy strict scrutiny. Indeed, Allen did not discuss the
Fourteenth Amendment at all. Here, by contrast, it is the
linchpin of this suit.2
In addition, our decision in Allen did not reach two pivotal
issues that we now squarely address. First, we left open
whether “race-based redistricting” under §2, even if permis-
sible when the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1982, could
“extend indefinitely into the future” despite significant
changes in relevant conditions. 599 U. S., at 45
(KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part); see Shelby County,
570 U. S., at 557 (requiring assessment of the constitution-
ality of the Voting Rights Act in light of current conditions).
Second, because the State in Allen did not cite partisan
goals in defending its map, we did not address whether §2
plaintiffs must disentangle race from politics in proving
their case. Indeed, this is our first occasion to address the
implications of Rucho in a vote-dilution case. Failing to ac-
count for political considerations in redistricting, as ex-
plained above, can allow plaintiffs to undo a State’s legiti-
mate, nonracial decisions under the banner of §2. In light
of our answers to these questions left open in Allen, we now
update the Gingles test to ensure a constitutional reading
and application of §2.
——————
2 The dissent claims that the Fourteenth Amendment is irrelevant to
our analysis, post, at 39–40, n. 11 (opinion of KAGAN, J.), but the dissent
appears to forget—or at least tries to lead readers to forget—that the
decision before us is based on the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs
claimed, and the court below held, that the map enacted by the state
legislature in SB8 impermissibly discriminated on the basis of race and
thus violated the plaintiffs’ rights under the Fourteenth Amendment’s
Equal Protection Clause. See supra, at 16.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
33
Opinion of the Court
IV
Under the updated Gingles framework, the facts of this
suit easily require affirmance.
Louisiana’s enactment of SB8 triggered strict scrutiny
because the State’s underlying goal was racial. The State
never hid the ball: It configured District 6 to achieve a black
voting-age population over 50% because it knew that if it
failed to do so, the Robinson court would very likely find its
map unlawful and order the use of something like the Rob-
inson plaintiffs’ illustrative maps, which would have imper-
iled one of the influential incumbents the legislature sought
to protect. The State’s intentional compliance with the
court’s demands constituted an “express acknowledgment
that race played a role in the drawing of district lines.” Al-
exander, 602 U. S., at 8. Louisiana therefore had to satisfy
the “extraordinarily onerous” standard of proving that its
use of race was narrowly tailored to further a compelling
governmental interest. Id., at 11.
No compelling interest justifies SB8. Section 2 does not
provide a compelling interest because the State did not
need to create a new majority-minority district to comply
with the Act. That is because at every step of the Gingles
framework, the Robinson plaintiffs failed to prove their §2
case.
On the first Gingles precondition, the Robinson plaintiffs
did not meet their burden because they did not provide an
illustrative map that met all the State’s nonracial goals.
The most obvious deficit in the plaintiffs’ illustrative maps
was the failure to meet the State’s political goals, including
incumbency protection. The plaintiffs’ preferred map
would have placed Representative Letlow in a majority-
Democratic district and thus effectively ensured her exit
from Congress. See Brief for Appellant in No. 24–109, at
14; 2 App. to Juris. Statement in No. 24–110, p. 673a (plac-
ing Representative Letlow in a district with over twice as
many registered Democrats as registered Republicans).34 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
The Robinson court erroneously concluded that the plain-
tiffs’ illustrative maps protected incumbents because the
maps left all six Representatives “in the district where they
currently live” and “could avoid incumbent pairing.” 605
F. Supp. 3d, at 830. That observation missed the point: An
incumbent is not protected if he or she will lose re-election.
And because the plaintiffs’ illustrative maps failed to pro-
tect all the incumbents that the State sought to shield, the
plaintiffs did not meet their burden on this precondition.
Nor did the plaintiffs meet their burden on the second
and third Gingles preconditions. To show racially polarized
voting, the Robinson plaintiffs offered evidence that black
and white voters consistently supported different candi-
dates, but their analysis did not control for partisan prefer-
ences. See 605 F. Supp. 3d, at 840.
Even if the Robinson plaintiffs had met their burden on
the Gingles preconditions, they still would have failed to
show an objective likelihood of intentional discrimination
based on the totality of circumstances. The Robinson court
went through the nine Senate Report factors, but none of
the evidence it cited showed even a plausible likelihood of
intentional discrimination by the State. Much of the cited
evidence—such as the low number of black Louisianans
who have been elected to Congress in recent decades—
failed to disentangle race from politics. See 605 F. Supp.
3d, at 845–846. Indeed, the court observed that black vot-
ers have been aligned with the Democratic party for dec-
ades and that issues discussed by that party appealed to
black voters. Id., at 845. Those observations should have
undercut, not strengthened, any showing of intentional ra-
cial discrimination because race and politics are so inter-
twined.
The Robinson court also relied on the “‘sordid history’” of
intentional discrimination by Louisianian officials in the
decades before the Voting Rights Act’s passage. Id., at 846.
And it cast aside as “irrelevant” the lack of evidence thatCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
35
Opinion of the Court
black voters had faced intentional discrimination in recent
years. Id., at 847. That analysis had its priorities back-
wards. The Fifteenth Amendment, which the Voting Rights
Act enforces, “is not designed to punish for the past” but
works “to ensure a better future.” Shelby County, 570 U. S.,
at 553. The focus of §2 must therefore be on “current con-
ditions,” not on “decades-old data relevant to decades-old
problems.” Ibid. And none of the historical evidence pre-
sented by plaintiffs came close to showing an objective like-
lihood that the State’s challenged map was the result of in-
tentional racial discrimination.
In sum, because the Voting Rights Act did not require
Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority dis-
trict, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race
in creating SB8. That map is an unconstitutional gerry-
mander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs’ constitu-
tional rights.
V
The dissent’s arguments are fully addressed in the prior
sections of this opinion, but in closing we emphasize three
points.
First, the dissent states over and over again that our de-
cision requires a §2 plaintiff to prove discriminatory intent.
Post, at 6, 23–26, 30–32, 37, 39–41, 45–46. What must be
shown is exactly what the 1982 amendment of §2 called for.
A §2 plaintiff in a vote dilution case must show that a dis-
tricting scheme denies members of a racial group the same
“opportunity” as other voters to elect the candidates they
prefer. Supra, at 20–22. When that is shown, the circum-
stances are comparable to those in White, 412 U. S. 755, the
decision from which the new language added by Congress
in 1982 was drawn. That is, the circumstances must give
rise to a strong inference of racial discrimination. See su-
pra, at 23–26.36 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
Opinion of the Court
Second, contrary to the dissent’s assertion, we have not
overruled Allen. As is our general practice, the Allen Court
adjudicated the case based on the parties’ arguments, and
in that case, the State did not defend its map on the ground
that it was drawn to achieve a political objective. See supra,
at 31–32. Here, the State has been forthright from the be-
ginning that its aim was to protect the State’s most promi-
nent Republican House members. One may lament parti-
san gerrymandering, but for the reasons explained in
Rucho, partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable
in federal court. And in a racial gerrymandering case like
the one before us, race and politics must be disentangled,
as even the author of the dissent has acknowledged. See
Alexander, 602 U. S., at 9; Cooper, 581 U. S., at 308 (opinion
for the Court by KAGAN, J.) (holding that a racial-gerry-
mandering plaintiff must “disentangle race from politics
and prove that the former drove a district’s lines”). That is
true regardless whether the case is brought pursuant to the
Fourteenth Amendment or the VRA, since §2 of the VRA
requires evidence giving rise to a strong inference of inten-
tional discrimination. If race and politics are not disentan-
gled and a §2 claim is cynically used as a tool for advancing
a partisan end, the VRA’s noble goal will be perverted.
Third, while the dissent wraps itself in the mantle of stare
decisis, the dissent is unabashedly at war with key prece-
dents. See post, at 45 (claiming that Rucho was disas-
trously wrong and should be cabined); post, at 5, 8–9, 42–
43 (repeatedly criticizing Shelby County and citing the dis-
sent in that case); post, at 4 (criticizing the Court’s decision
in Brnovich). Respect for precedent cannot be a one-way
street.
* * *
The judgment of the District Court is affirmed, and these
cases are remanded for proceedings consistent with this
opinion.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
Opinion of the Court
37
It is so ordered.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
1
THOMAS, J., concurring
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
Nos. 24–109 and 24–110
_________________
LOUISIANA, APPELLANT
24–109 v.
PHILLIP CALLAIS, ET AL.
PRESS ROBINSON, ET AL., APPELLANTS
24–110 v.
PHILLIP CALLAIS, ET AL.
ON APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR
THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
[April 29, 2026]
JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom JUSTICE GORSUCH joins,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion in full. This Court should never
have interpreted §2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to ef-
fectively give racial groups “an entitlement to roughly pro-
portional representation.” Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S.
30, 93 (1986) (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment); see
ante, at 23–24. By doing so, the Court led legislatures and
courts to “systematically divid[e] the country into electoral
districts along racial lines.” Holder v. Hall, 512 U. S. 874,
905 (1994) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). “Blacks
[we]re drawn into ‘black districts’ and given ‘black repre-
sentatives’; Hispanics [we]re drawn into Hispanic districts
and given ‘Hispanic representatives’; and so on.” Ibid. That
interpretation rendered §2 “repugnant to any nation that
strives for the ideal of a color-blind Constitution.” Id., at
905–906. Today’s decision should largely put an end to this
“disastrous misadventure” in voting-rights jurisprudence.
Id., at 893.2 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
THOMAS, J., concurring
As I explained more than 30 years ago, I would go further
and hold that §2 of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate
districting at all. See id., at 922–923. The relevant text
prohibits States from imposing or applying a “voting quali-
fication,” “prerequisite to voting,” or “standard, practice, or
procedure,” in a manner that results in a denial or abridge-
ment of the right to vote based on race. 52 U. S. C.
§10301(a). How States draw district lines does not fall
within any of those three categories. Holder, 512 U. S., at
922–923 (opinion of THOMAS, J.); Allen v. Milligan, 599
U. S. 1, 46 (2023) (THOMAS, J., dissenting). The words in §2
instead “reach only ‘enactments that regulate citizens’ ac-
cess to the ballot or the processes for counting a ballot’; they
‘do not include a State’s . . . choice of one districting scheme
over another.’” Ibid. (quoting Holder, 512 U. S., at 945
(opinion of THOMAS, J.)). Therefore, no §2 challenge to dis-
tricting should ever succeed.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
1
KAGAN, J., dissenting
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
Nos. 24–109 and 24–110
_________________
LOUISIANA, APPELLANT
24–109 v.
PHILLIP CALLAIS, ET AL.
PRESS ROBINSON, ET AL., APPELLANTS
24–110 v.
PHILLIP CALLAIS, ET AL.
ON APPEALS FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR
THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
[April 29, 2026]
JUSTICE KAGAN, with whom JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR and
JUSTICE JACKSON join, dissenting.
Consider the story of a hypothetical congressional district
in a hypothetical State, subjected to a redistricting scheme.
The example is admittedly stylized, but in its essence sim-
ulates the dispute before us, and clarifies the immense is-
sues at stake. The district, let’s say, is a single county, in
the shape of a near-perfect circle, sitting in the middle of a
rectangular State. The State is one with a long history of
virulent racial discrimination, and its many effects, includ-
ing in residential segregation and political division, remain
significant even today. The population of the circle district
is 90% Black; the rest of the State, divided into five sur-
rounding districts, is 90% White. And voting throughout
all those districts is racially polarized: Black residents vote
heavily for Democratic candidates, while White residents
vote heavily for Republicans. The circle district thus ena-
bles the State’s Black community to elect a representative
of its choice, whom no neighboring community would put in2 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
office. But that arrangement, in this not-so-hypothetical, is
not to last. The state legislature decides to eliminate the
circle district, slicing it into six pie pieces and allocating one
each to six new, still solidly White congressional districts.
The State’s Black voters are now widely dispersed, and (un-
like the State’s White voters) lack any ability to elect a rep-
resentative of their choice. Election after election, Black
citizens’ votes are, by every practical measure, wasted.
That is racial vote dilution in its most classic form. A
minority community that is cohesive in its geography and
politics alike, and that faces continued adversity from racial
division, is split—“cracked” is the usual term—so that it
loses all its electoral influence. Members of the racial mi-
nority can still go to the polls and cast a ballot. But given
the State’s racially polarized voting, they cannot hope—in
the way the State’s White citizens can—to elect a person
whom they think will well represent their interests. Their
votes matter less than others’ do; they translate into less
political voice. Or, as this Court put it recently, the crack-
ing makes “a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonmi-
nority voter.” Allen v. Milligan, 599 U. S. 1, 25 (2023).
And because that is so, Congress in the Voting Rights Act
made the practice illegal. Section 2 of that Act guarantees
that members of every racial group have an equal “oppor-
tunity” to “elect representatives of their choice.” 52 U. S. C.
§10301(b). That promise arose from a far-too-prominent
part of this Nation’s history. Even after the Fifteenth
Amendment banned racial discrimination in voting, state
officials routinely deprived African Americans of their vot-
ing rights. Through a seemingly boundless array of mech-
anisms—most of them facially race-neutral and among
them the drawing of district lines—States either prevented
Black citizens from casting ballots or ensured that their
votes would count for next to nothing. The Voting Rights
Act was meant as the corrective. And when this Court con-
strued it too narrowly—insisting that a person suing underCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
3
KAGAN, J., dissenting
Section 2 had to prove discriminatory intent—Congress
amended the law so that it turned solely on discriminatory
effects. Under that revised version, a person has a good
Section 2 claim if the challenged state action, in the “total-
ity of circumstances,” “results in” an electoral system “not
equally open” to members of his racial group—meaning a
system giving those citizens “less opportunity” to “partici-
pate in the political process and to elect representatives of
their choice.” §10301 (emphasis added). And for 40 years
now, this Court has recognized that language to encompass
districting decisions that, in the way illustrated above, re-
sult in vote dilution—the “minimiz[ing]” of minority voters’
“ability to elect their preferred candidates.” Allen, 599
U. S., at 18 (quoting Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U. S. 30, 48
(1986)).
But no longer. Under the Court’s new view of Section 2,
a State can, without legal consequence, systematically di-
lute minority citizens’ voting power. Of course, the majority
does not announce today’s holding that way. Its opinion is
understated, even antiseptic. The majority claims only to
be “updat[ing]” our Section 2 law, as though through a few
technical tweaks. Ante, at 26, 29, 32. But in fact, those
“updates” eviscerate the law, so that it will not remedy even
the classic example of vote dilution given above. Without a
basis in Section 2’s text or the Constitution, the majority
formulates new proof requirements for plaintiffs alleging
vote dilution. Those demands, meant to “disentangle race
from politics,” ante, at 25, leverage two features of modern
political life: that racial identity and party preference are
often linked and that politicians have free rein to adopt par-
tisan gerrymanders. The first fact—say, that in a given
area, Black voters mainly support Democrats and White
voters Republicans—was viewed before today as practically
an element of a vote-dilution claim, because it indicates
that a minority group is politically cohesive enough to elect
a preferred representative but will be outvoted by the4 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
majority bloc. See Allen, 599 U. S., at 18, 22. The second
fact—the result of a prior mistake by this Court—is some-
thing every day to regret, not to use as an excuse for strip-
ping minority citizens of their voting rights. But under the
majority’s new test, when those two facts coexist—which is
almost everywhere Section 2 still has purchase—a plaintiff
cannot prevail by showing that a redistricting resulted in
the dilution of minority voting power. Rather, a plaintiff
will have to show—contrary to Section 2’s clear text and de-
sign—that the legislators were “motivated by a discrimina-
tory purpose.” Ante, at 23 (emphasis added). And that, as
Section 2’s drafters knew, is well-nigh impossible.
Today’s ruling is part of a set: For over a decade, this
Court has had its sights set on the Voting Rights Act. In
2013, the Court made a nullity of Section 5, the provision of
the Act enabling the Department of Justice to review and
block new voting rules—including redistrictings—in juris-
dictions with a history of voter suppression. See Shelby
County v. Holder, 570 U. S. 529 (2013). Congress had re-
cently, and after lengthy study, reauthorized that preclear-
ance mechanism. It found the scheme still essential to
counter the protean techniques States can use to prevent
minorities from exercising their fair share of political influ-
ence. But this Court thought it knew better. “[T]hings have
changed dramatically,” the Court explained, id., at 547, ig-
noring that whether things had changed dramatically
enough to make the law dispensable was a question better
left to its democratically accountable authors. Not surpris-
ingly, a flood of discriminatory voting laws followed, and
now only Section 2 stood in the gap. In 2021, the Court did
half what was needed to raze that section too. See Brnovich
v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U. S. 647 (2021).
Section 2 prohibits not only vote-diluting districting plans,
but also discriminatory burdens on the casting of ballots.
In a suit involving the latter type of law, the Court invented
a new legal standard making Section 2 useless, on theCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
5
KAGAN, J., dissenting
theory that the statute as written was too “radical.” See id.,
at 674. Since the Court ruled, not a single Section 2 suit
has successfully challenged such a restriction on voting,
however discriminatory in operation. See R. Hasen, The
Stagnation, Retrogression, and Potential Pro-Voter Trans-
formation of U. S. Election Law, 134 Yale L. J. 1673, 1686
(2025).
And finally, today, the last piece—Section 2 as applied to
redistricting. The last, and surely the hardest, for just
three Terms ago the Court upheld a vote-dilution challenge
to a districting map in a case much like this one—preserv-
ing Section 2 as a tool to prevent racially discriminatory re-
districting. See Allen, 599 U. S., at 17. “[W]e decline to
adopt,” the Court said then, “an interpretation of §2 that
would revise and reformulate” our “§2 jurisprudence [of]
nearly forty years.” Id., at 26. Nothing has changed in the
three years since. Yet today, the majority does “revise and
reformulate” . . . and destroy. It avails itself again of the
tools used before to dismantle the Act: untenable readings
of statutory text, made-up and impossible-to-meet eviden-
tiary requirements, disregard for precedent, and disdain for
congressional judgment. And in that way it greenlights re-
districting plans that will disable minority communities—
in Louisiana and across the Nation—from electing, as ma-
jority communities can, “representatives of their choice.”
§10301(b). What if the districts in which minority citizens
exercise voting power are sliced up, and the pieces ap-
pended to districts in which they can play no meaningful
role? The majority tells us that the inability to make out a
Section 2 claim will just be a mark of the Nation’s progress,
and therefore “cause for celebration.” Ante, at 31.
I dissent. The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accu-
rately, was—“one of the most consequential, efficacious,
and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in
our Nation’s history.” Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 562
(Ginsburg, J., dissenting). It was born of the literal blood6 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in
awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to ful-
filling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it
has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by
the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have
the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of
this Court. I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the
majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights
Act.
I
I begin with some history—both with what led originally
to the Voting Rights Act and with how the current Section
2 came to be. The point is not to deliver a eulogy for the
law—though, in truth, the Court’s step-by-step slaying of
voting rights now makes one appropriate. Rather, the ob-
ject is to reveal how far today’s decision repudiates past,
and rightfully still controlling, congressional choices. As I’ll
later explain, the majority now demands that vote-dilution
plaintiffs muster proof of racially discriminatory motive.
See infra, at 23–32. In that way, the decision echoes an
earlier one of this Court, which also held that Section 2
should function as an intent test. See Mobile v. Bolden, 446
U. S. 55 (1980). But Congress, as you’ll soon see, amended
Section 2 to reject that view: In light of the way voting dis-
crimination had operated since the Fifteenth Amendment’s
adoption, Congress instead drafted Section 2 to bar the use
of any electoral mechanism that would result in minority
citizens having less opportunity than non-minority citizens
to choose their political representatives.
A
In the wake of the Civil War, Congress enacted and the
States ratified the Fifteenth Amendment, to ensure the en-
franchisement of Black Americans. Nearly 200,000 Black
men had fought in the Union cause: “[W]hen the fight isCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
7
KAGAN, J., dissenting
over,” General Sherman counseled, “the hand that drops
the musket cannot be denied the ballot.” See A. Keyssar,
The Right to Vote 69 (rev. ed. 2009) (Keyssar). And millions
more African Americans had just become citizens, giving
them a claim on political rights. The Fifteenth Amendment
responded with a clarion promise of racial equality in vot-
ing: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
State on account of race, color, or previous condition of ser-
vitude.”
The Amendment’s passage was a momentous occasion. It
appeared to affirm that a mere few years after slavery’s
end, African Americans had become “equal members of the
body politic.” E. Foner, The Second Founding 111 (2019)
(Foner). President Grant, in a message to Congress, called
the Amendment “the most important event that has oc-
curred since the nation came to life.” Ibid. Black Ameri-
cans similarly referred to the Amendment as the Nation’s
“second birth.” Ibid. At one of the many celebrations rati-
fication sparked, Frederick Douglass rejoiced that those
just released from bondage were now “placed upon an equal
footing with all other men”: “Never,” he declared, “was rev-
olution more complete.” Keyssar 82; Foner 112.
But all the hosannas were many years premature: “In the
century that followed,” the Fifteenth Amendment “proved
little more than a parchment promise.” Allen, 599 U. S., at
10. Violence and intimidation were ever-present ways to
deny Black citizens their right to vote. But often force was
not needed, because state laws could well enough accom-
plish that goal. Especially in the South, States soon put in
place a host of facially race-neutral devices to systemati-
cally disenfranchise African American citizens. Poll taxes,
literacy tests, “good character” exams, property qualifica-
tions, convoluted registration processes—all these and
more, when combined with administrative discretion, effec-
tively suppressed the Black vote, without much affecting8 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
the White one. See South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U. S.
301, 311 (1966). Congress could have acted: the Fifteenth
Amendment gave it the “power to enforce” minority voting
rights “by appropriate legislation.” But for decades it sat
mute while facially race-neutral voting rules succeeded in
“render[ing] the right to vote illusory” for Black Americans.
Allen, 599 U. S., at 10. Louisiana’s post-Reconstruction
rules, to cite the most pertinent example, took less than a
decade to drive the number of Black registered voters from
130,000 (in 1896) to 1,342 (in 1904). See Keyssar 91. The
numbers did not begin to climb until the end of World War
II (when Black soldiers returned from other battlefields),
and even then only slowly. See 1 U. S. Commission on Civil
Rights Report 42 (1961).
Congress’s initial efforts to counter voting discrimina-
tion—in the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964—did
little but prove the difficulty of the task. Each of those stat-
utes authorized the Attorney General “to seek injunctions
against public and private interference with the right to
vote on racial grounds.” Katzenbach, 383 U. S., at 313. But
time and again, States found ways to evade the ensuing
court orders. They “merely switched to discriminatory de-
vices not covered by” the court decrees, finding yet new
race-neutral rules (there seemed an endless number) that
would maintain the disparity between White and Black vot-
ing power. Id., at 314. Congress thus learned of the “unre-
mitting and ingenious” methods States could use to resist
African American enfranchisement. Id., at 309. Protecting
minority voting was like “battling the Hydra”: “Whenever
one form of voting discrimination was identified and pro-
hibited, others sprang up in its place.” Shelby County, 570
U. S., at 560 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented Congress’s
most determined effort to stop the cycle. Selma’s Bloody
Sunday had galvanized the Nation to finally confront racial
disfranchisement. Now Congress enacted legislationCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
9
KAGAN, J., dissenting
making use of a double-barreled approach to ensure the Fif-
teenth Amendment’s enforcement. Section 5 of the Act re-
quired that States or localities with a history of racial voter
suppression obtain Department of Justice approval before
implementing new voting districts or rules. An administra-
tive review process thus would impede—at least, until this
Court in Shelby County stopped it—the ever-inventive ef-
forts of certain jurisdictions to deny or minimize minority
voting. Meantime, Section 2 provided judicial recourse for
victims of voting discrimination in all jurisdictions. That
provision prohibited any election rule or practice that would
“deny or abridge” the right to vote, thus imposing a “perma-
nent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting” (or
so the Court assured the country when disabling Section 5).
42 U. S. C. §1973 (1970); Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 557.
Taken together, Congress thought, the two mechanisms
could “forever banish the blight of racial discrimination in
voting”—effectively countering States’ constantly morphing
methods of suppressing minority ballots. Allen, 599 U. S.,
at 10.
B
After the Act’s passage—and partly because of its initial
success—those methods more and more focused on vote di-
lution. The Act led to a large increase in minority voting
registration: In just five years, almost as many African
Americans registered to vote in six Southern States as in
the entire century before 1965. See C. Davidson, The Vot-
ing Rights Act, in Controversies in Minority Voting 21 (B.
Grofman & C. Davidson eds. 1992). And the Act mostly
halted state efforts to prevent those new voters from casting
ballots at all. So the States, as Congress noted when reau-
thorizing Section 5 in 1975, “resorted to [measures] which
would dilute increasing minority voting strength.” City of
Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156, 181 (1980) (quoting
H. R. Rep. No. 94–196, pp. 10–11 (1975)). Efforts to10 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
minimize minorities’ voting power took several forms. One
was to use at-large voting. A majority-White municipality,
for example, might exclude all African Americans from its
city council by scrapping geographic districts in favor of
citywide elections. See Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U. S. 379,
389 (1971). Another common dilution mechanism was just
to redraw single-member districts. Minority citizens could
be “packed”: A racial community large enough to constitute
a majority in two normal districts—and therefore capable
of electing two representatives—might be crammed into a
single district instead. See Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S.
146, 153–154 (1993). Or else minority citizens could be
“cracked,” as in the hypothetical introducing this opinion.
See supra, at 1–2. Then, voters would be dispersed across
multiple districts so they could not muster a majority in
any. See Voinovich, 507 U. S., at 153. In either event, a
minority citizen’s vote would “carry less weight than” it did
previously or than it would “in another, hypothetical dis-
trict.” Gill v. Whitford, 585 U. S. 48, 67 (2018).
This Court soon held, in White v. Regester, 412 U. S. 755
(1973), that such practices could be unlawful because of
their effects—more specifically, because they result in une-
qual electoral opportunities for minority citizens. (Attend
closely here, because White becomes the template for the
current version of Section 2.) The plaintiffs in White chal-
lenged a Texas districting scheme that established multi-
member districts in two counties with concentrated urban
populations, even while using single-member districts
nearly everywhere else. The effect of the scheme, the plain-
tiffs charged, was to “minimize the voting strength of racial
groups”—both African Americans and Mexican Ameri-
cans—by putting them in a broad county-wide district in
which their votes would be swamped. Id., at 765, 767. In
addressing that claim, the Court initially stated that it was
“not enough” to show that the districting scheme prevented
the minority groups from achieving proportionalCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
11
KAGAN, J., dissenting
representation—legislative seats in proportion to their pop-
ulation. Id., at 765. But that did not mean that the plain-
tiffs had to show that the State had acted with discrimina-
tory intent. Rather, the Court held, the plaintiffs could
prevail on a different kind of showing that a scheme’s effect
was to “minimize the voting strength of racial groups.”
Ibid. Under the Court’s test, there was unlawful vote dilu-
tion if “the political process[]” was “not equally open to par-
ticipation” by a racial group, so that “its members had less
opportunity” than others “to participate in the political pro-
cesses and to elect legislators of their choice.” Id., at 766.
The Court in White found that test satisfied under a “to-
tality of the circumstances” inquiry, which looked to how
the multi-member districting scheme operated when “over-
laid” on historical, social, and political “realities.” Id., at
769. As part of that analysis, the Court noted the “history
of official racial discrimination in Texas” and the persistent
use of “racial campaign tactics” in elections. Id., at 766–
767. But beyond such intentional race-based action, the
Court looked to how the current or “residual” effects of past
discrimination, including disparities in matters like hous-
ing, “education [and] employment,” had political conse-
quences. Id., at 768. Similarly, with respect to Mexican
Americans, the Court considered evidence of “cultural and
language barrier[s]” to political participation. Ibid. And
finally, the Court homed in on political data itself, including
voter registration and the infrequent election of Black or
Hispanic candidates in majority-White districts. See id., at
766, 768–769. When all those factors were combined—in
what the Court called “an intensely local appraisal”—the
“impact” of the multi-member districts clearly emerged:
Those districts denied minority voters equal “access to the12 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
political process[],” “specifically in the election of [state]
representatives.” Id., at 767–769.1
Just seven years later, however, the Court did an about-
face, now requiring a showing of discriminatory intent to
succeed on a vote-dilution claim. In City of Mobile v. Bol-
den, the plaintiffs challenged an at-large election system for
a three-member city commission. Under that system, Mo-
bile’s Black population, which made up 35% of the total, had
never managed to elect a candidate of its choice. But the
Court did not embark on the kind of analysis employed in
White to determine whether the system diluted Black votes.
Instead, the Court’s controlling opinion held that Section 2
merely “restated the prohibitions” of the Fifteenth Amend-
ment, which barred only intentional discrimination. 446
U. S., at 61 (plurality opinion); see id., at 62–65. And the
plaintiffs had produced no evidence of discriminatory mo-
tive. They could, the Court noted (as though it were the end
of the matter), “register and vote without hindrance.” Id.,
at 65. That their chosen candidates happened to always
lose was beside the point. Because they could not show that
——————
1 The majority’s description of the White Court’s “totality of the circum-
stances” analysis gives a false impression. According to the majority,
“the Court’s rationale rested on evidence that gave rise to an obvious in-
ference” that the State acted with “discriminatory purpose or intent.”
Ante, at 6. That might be so of pieces of the evidence the Court relied
on—for example, the use of “racial campaign tactics” by a party-affiliated
organization. Ante, at 7; 412 U. S., at 767. And it is of course true that
evidence of disparate impact can be of such magnitude (in this sphere as
in others) as to indicate illicit intent. But the Court was crystal clear
that its review of local conditions encompassed things “neither . . . im-
proper nor invidious.” Id., at 766. And indeed, its opinion reads more
like a fine-grained report on political and social conditions than (as the
majority would have it) a criminal bill of particulars. Most important
(and as even the majority admits), the Court never suggested that the
ultimate point of its analysis was to gauge the State’s intent. Ante, at 6.
Rather, the point was just what the Court said: to decide whether Texas’s
districting scheme in fact “operated to dilute [minorities’] voting
strength.” 412 U. S., at 759.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
13
KAGAN, J., dissenting
the city had “purposeful[ly] exclu[ded]” them “from partici-
pati[ng] in the election process,” the Court held, they had
no viable Section 2 suit. Id., at 64 (emphasis added); see
Allen, 599 U. S., at 11 (similarly describing Bolden).
Bolden, as the majority notes, triggered “an avalanche of
criticism, both in the media and within the civil rights com-
munity.” Ante, at 5 (quoting Allen, 599 U. S., at 11). This
Court recently noted a few of the assessments. “[T]he big-
gest step backwards in civil rights” to come from the Court
since the Voting Rights Act’s passage. Allen, 599 U. S., at
11 (quoting N. Y. Times, Apr. 23, 1980, p. A22). And a “ma-
jor defeat for blacks and other minorities fighting electoral
schemes that exclude them from office.” Allen, 599 U. S., at
11–12 (quoting Washington Post, Apr. 23, 1980, p. A5).
The problem, as even the majority recognizes, was “that
a focus on discriminatory intent, rather than discrimina-
tory effects, would defeat worthy claims because of the dif-
ficulty of proving intentional discrimination.” Ante, at 5. It
is the rare legislature, as the history of voting discrimina-
tion shows, that cannot camouflage racial targeting with
race-neutral justifications. For that reason, Bolden brought
vote-dilution claims to a near-standstill. The Department
of Justice shelved the dilution cases it had intended to
bring; and private plaintiffs filed just 10 such suits in the
next year, compared with 60 the year before. See A. Ber-
man, Give Us the Ballot 135 (2015). States, it seemed, could
make minority votes meaningless without ever running
into the Voting Rights Act.
But then Congress stepped in, to reverse Bolden’s intent
requirement—and create the statute existing today. The
House began the process with a simple change to Section
2’s text. It replaced the words “to deny or abridge” with the
phrase “in a manner which results in a denial or abridge-
ment of,” to make the section look like this:14 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
“No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or
standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or ap-
plied by any State or political subdivision in a manner
which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of
any citizen of the United States to vote on account of
race or color.” §10301(a) (emphasis added).
But a Senate subcommittee led by Senator Orrin Hatch ob-
jected. It thought the House’s amendment would always
require racially proportional representation, and advocated
keeping Section 2—as construed by Bolden—just as it was.
The impasse was resolved by Senator Bob Dole in the Judi-
ciary Committee, through the addition of a subsection cod-
ifying the White decision. Recall that White had rejected
proportional representation as the standard for vote-dilu-
tion claims. See supra, at 10–11. Now Senator Dole—while
retaining the House’s “results in” language—added a provi-
sion to do the same thing. See §10301(b) (“[N]othing in this
section establishes a right to have members of a [racial
group] elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the
population”). And yet more important for present purposes,
Senator Dole took language from White to clarify when a
State would violate the ban on electoral rules that “result[]
in a denial or abridgement” of voting. A violation is estab-
lished, the Dole (but really the White) language stated,
“if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown
that the political processes leading to nomination or
election in the State or political subdivision are not
equally open to participation by members of a [racial
group] in that its members have less opportunity than
other members of the electorate to participate in the
political process and to elect representatives of their
choice.” §10301(b).
That elaboration of when the effects of an electoral rule
would cause a violation of Section 2 received bipartisan sup-
port. The amended Section 2 passed both the House andCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
15
KAGAN, J., dissenting
the Senate by huge majorities; and in June 1982, President
Reagan signed it into law.
An “oft-cited” Senate Report explained just what the 1982
amendment had accomplished: The new Section 2 repudi-
ated Bolden’s intent requirement and adopted White’s “re-
sults test.” Brnovich, 594 U. S., at 658; S. Rep. No. 97–417,
p. 27 (1982) (Senate Report). An intent test, the Report
stated, imposed “an inordinately difficult burden for plain-
tiffs.” Id., at 36. Even when state actors had purposefully
discriminated, they would likely be “ab[le] to offer a non-
racial rationalization,” supported by “a false trail” of “offi-
cial resolutions” and “other legislative history eschewing
any racial motive.” Id., at 37. The proof lay in what had
happened after Bolden, when even suits involving “egre-
gious” vote dilution had failed. Senate Report, at 37; see
id., at 26–27, 37–39. And in any event, the Report contin-
ued, the Bolden intent test “ask[ed] the wrong question.”
Senate Report, at 36. The right question was instead the
one White—and now the statute—asked: “whether minori-
ties have equal access to the process of electing their repre-
sentatives.” Senate Report, at 36. In applying the new Sec-
tion 2, the Report instructed, courts should “assess the
impact of the challenged” practice based on “objective fac-
tors” to determine whether it worked to “minimize or cancel
out the voting strength and political effectiveness of minor-
ity groups.” Id., at 27–28.
The Senate Report also noted this Court’s holdings recog-
nizing Congress’s constitutional authority to focus the Sec-
tion 2 standard on results. It is “hornbook law,” the Report
explained, that the Fifteenth Amendment “grant[s] Con-
gress broad power” to enact legislation “reasonably adapted
to protect citizens against the risk” that their constitutional
right to vote will be denied. Id., at 39–40 (citing Katzen-
bach, 383 U. S., at 326). So even though the Fifteenth
Amendment itself barred only intentional discrimination,
Congress could enact legislation extending to16 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
discriminatory effects. Indeed, the Report observed, this
Court had held as much two years earlier, when it approved
Section 5’s broad effects-based scope. Senate Report, at 40
(citing City of Rome, 446 U. S. 156). In Section 2 as well,
proper enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment necessi-
tated a results test. For one thing, voting rules with “dis-
criminatory results perpetuate the effects of past purpose-
ful discrimination.” Senate Report, at 40. And anyway, the
Report again emphasized, the difficulties of proving motive
would “create a substantial risk that intentional discrimi-
nation” would go “undetected, uncorrected and undeterred.”
Ibid.
So Congress made a choice that was “as considered as
considered comes”: to ensure that “results alone could lead
to liability” under Section 2. Brnovich, 594 U. S., at 703
(KAGAN, J., dissenting). Congress in 1982 knew all about
this Nation’s history of racially discriminatory voting prac-
tices. It knew that even when States could no longer deny
ballots to minority citizens, they might still try to give their
votes no or minimal weight. And Congress knew that those
efforts did not come tagged as race-based. To the contrary,
they were race-neutral on their face, and likewise were pub-
licly backed by race-neutral justifications. So Congress re-
nounced, as strongly as it could, Bolden’s decision to limit
Section 2’s ban to intentional discrimination. It made sure
instead, as this Court recently explained, that Section 2
would “turn[] on the presence of discriminatory effects.” Al-
len, 599 U. S., at 25; see id., at 44 (KAVANAUGH, J., concur-
ring in part) (“[T]he text of §2 establishes an effects test, not
an intent test”). And more precisely, that the section would
turn on whether, given all relevant circumstances, an elec-
toral rule would leave minority voters with “less oppor-
tunity” than non-minority voters to “elect representatives
of their choice.” §10301(b).
There is a way to decide this case consistent with that
fully permissible congressional choice, and a way not. InCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
17
KAGAN, J., dissenting
the next part, I show how 40 years’ worth of this Court’s
caselaw would address the vote-dilution claim involved
here. After that, I address what today’s majority does.2
II
This Court first construed the amended Section 2 in
Thornburg v. Gingles, establishing there a framework—like
the new statute itself—based on White. That framework
has governed vote-dilution claims for the last four decades.
And indeed, just three years ago, in Allen, we unequivocally
reaffirmed it when sustaining a vote-dilution challenge to
an Alabama redistricting scheme. See 599 U. S., at 19–23.
Had we proceeded along the same road today, we would
have treated the vote-dilution challenge to Louisiana’s
scheme in the same way.
“Gingles began,” as Allen recently noted, “by describing
what §2 guards against.” 599 U. S., at 17. “The essence of
a §2 claim,” Gingles explained, is that an electoral rule or
practice “interacts with social and historical conditions,”
generally caused by past intentional discrimination, “to
cause an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black
and white voters.” 478 U. S., at 47. Such an inequality ex-
ists when the challenged rule “operates to minimize or can-
cel out [minority voters’] ability to elect their preferred
——————
2 A wrinkle here is that the suit directly before us involves a claim of
racial gerrymandering under the Fourteenth Amendment, not of vote di-
lution under Section 2. See ante, at 16–17. (As I will later discuss, the
elements of the two have always been poles apart—with a dilution claim
turning on an election rule’s effects and a gerrymandering claim turning
on its purpose. See infra, at 26–27, and n. 6). But this gerrymandering
suit arose out of a prior dilution suit’s success: The plaintiffs here attack
the districting plan that Louisiana devised to remedy the vote dilution
previously found. See ante, at 12–17. And the majority chooses to resolve
this suit by focusing on the earlier one—holding that the plaintiffs here
succeed because the court in the earlier litigation did not apply the ma-
jority’s brand-new understanding of Section 2. See ante, at 32–35. So I
too focus on how to decide a vote-dilution claim under Section 2, and do
not address other issues implicated in a gerrymandering suit.18 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
candidates.” Id., at 48. And the risk of that “mini-
miz[ation]”—or dilution—is greatest when “minority and
majority voters consistently prefer different candidates”
and the minority voters are submerged in a majority voting
population that “regularly defeat[s] [their] choices.” Ibid.;
see Allen, 599 U. S., at 17–18.3
To get at that issue, Gingles initially requires a Section 2
plaintiff asserting vote dilution to satisfy three “precondi-
tions.” 478 U. S., at 50. First, the minority group allegedly
harmed must be “sufficiently large and geographically com-
pact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured dis-
trict”—meaning, one “comport[ing] with traditional dis-
tricting criteria.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 18 (alteration
omitted). Second, the identified minority group must be
“politically cohesive,” meaning that its members mainly
vote for the same parties or candidates. Gingles, 478 U. S.,
at 51. And third, the majority in the district must “vote[]
sufficiently as a bloc to enable it . . . usually to defeat the
minority’s preferred candidate.” Ibid. Those three factors,
taken together, serve a gatekeeping function. They permit
a vote-dilution suit to proceed only if a plaintiff can show
that minority voters would elect a “representative of [their]
own choice” in some reasonably drawn electoral district, but
——————
3 The majority, in describing the legal background to this case, briefly
criticizes our Gingles opinion for spending too little time with Section 2’s
text and too much with the Senate Judiciary Committee Report. See
ante, at 7. The author of today’s decision made the same point in Allen—
in his then-dissenting opinion. See 599 U. S., at 103 (opinion of ALITO,
J.). But the erstwhile majority there rejected the argument, explaining
that, whatever changes have occurred in statutory interpretation, “Gin-
gles effectuates the delicate legislative bargain that §2 embodies.” Id.,
at 39, n. 10. It does so, as will soon become evident, by grounding its
framework in Section 2’s ban on electoral rules that, in all the circum-
stances, “result[] in” giving minority voters a “less[er] opportunity” than
others to “elect representatives of their choice.” §10301. And it does so,
too, by relying on (indeed, partly copying) this Court’s analysis in
White—which was the indisputable basis for Senator Dole’s textual com-
promise. See Allen, 599 U. S., at 12–13; supra, at 14–15.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
19
KAGAN, J., dissenting
that racially polarized voting in the district as actually
drawn will usually “impede[] [their] ability” to do so. Allen,
599 U. S., at 18; Gingles, 478 U. S., at 51.
That threshold test is not easily met. To satisfy the first
factor, a plaintiff will have to suggest alternative districting
plans complying with such traditional criteria as compact-
ness, contiguity, and respect for geographic boundaries and
political subdivisions. And as Allen recently described, the
inability to offer such substitute maps has doomed a good
many vote-dilution suits. See 599 U. S., at 27–29 (citing
Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630 (1993); Miller v. Johnson, 515
U. S. 900 (1995); Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952 (1996); Abbott
v. Perez, 585 U. S. 579 (2018)). Similarly, to satisfy the sec-
ond and third conditions, the plaintiff must show the exist-
ence of racially polarized voting, generally through “statis-
tical evidence of historic voting patterns.” League of United
Latin American Citizens v. Perry, 548 U. S. 399, 500 (2006)
(ROBERTS, C. J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
It is never enough in a Section 2 suit to rely on “assump-
tions” about how individuals will “vote based on their ethnic
[or racial] background.” Ibid. Instead, “plaintiffs must
prove” racial bloc voting. Gingles, 478 U. S., at 46. Given
those requirements—and the steady decline in both resi-
dential segregation and racially polarized voting, which
make them harder to meet—only strong vote-dilution
claims can today get out of the gate. See Brief for Ellen D.
Katz et al. as Amici Curiae 7–8 (Katz Brief ); Allen, 599
U. S., at 26–29; infra, at 43–44.
And beyond Gingles’s preconditions lies the “totality of
circumstances” inquiry that migrated from White to Section
2’s text. §10301(b); see supra, at 14–15. To find, under that
test, that the political process is not “equally open” to mi-
nority voters, a court must make (so Gingles held, lifting
from White) “an intensely local appraisal” of how the chal-
lenged electoral rule operates against the backdrop of “past
and present [racial] realit[ies].” §10301(b); Gingles, 47820 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
U. S., at 79; see White, 412 U. S., at 769. The “objective fac-
tors” to be considered include the State’s “history of voting-
related discrimination,” its experience of “racial appeals in
political campaigns,” and its track record of electing minor-
ity citizens to office. Gingles, 478 U. S., at 44–45; see White,
412 U. S., at 769; Senate Report, at 28–29. So too, the in-
quiry may involve appraising the “effects of past discrimi-
nation” on economic and social conditions that “hinder [mi-
nority citizens’] ability to participate effectively in the
political process.” Gingles, 478 U. S., at 45; see White, 412
U. S., at 768. Equally, though, the totality test weighs the
strength of a “State’s interest in maintaining” a given elec-
toral practice. Houston Lawyers’ Assn. v. Attorney General
of Tex., 501 U. S. 419, 426 (1991). And the variety of mat-
ters to be assessed does nothing to detract from the test’s
bite. By digging deep into local context, the totality inquiry
implements Congress’s directive that a simple lack of pro-
portional representation cannot make out a Section 2 claim.
See Allen, 599 U. S., at 26–30. And when superimposed on
Gingles’s threshold conditions, the test ensures that Section
2 will work as intended: to limit liability to cases where elec-
toral rules in fact “deny minority voters equal opportunity”
in the political process. Allen, 599 U. S., at 30 (alteration
omitted).
Understood in that way, Allen explained just three years
ago, “Gingles has governed our Voting Rights Act jurispru-
dence since it was decided.” Id., at 19. More: “Congress has
never disturbed our understanding of §2 as Gingles con-
strued it.” Ibid. And more: “[W]e have applied Gingles in
one §2 case after another, to different kinds of electoral sys-
tems and to different jurisdictions in States all over the
country.” Ibid. (citing no fewer than 10 Supreme Court de-
cisions). And yes, still more, this time invoking “stare deci-
sis”: “[W]e decline to adopt an interpretation of §2 that
would revise and reformulate” the Gingles framework “that
has been the baseline of our §2 jurisprudence for nearlyCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
21
KAGAN, J., dissenting
forty years.” Id., at 26, and n. 3. One might even have
thought the matter settled. But see ante, at 1–37.4
In that settled view, a paradigmatic case of a Section 2
violation is the cracked-circle hypothetical opening this dis-
sent. See supra, at 1–2. If you refresh your memory, you’ll
instantly see why. The Black electorate could form—in-
deed, did form—a reasonably configured district: The circle
in the middle of the State complies with traditional district-
ing criteria of contiguity, compactness, and respect for po-
litical subdivisions. So Gingles’s first precondition is met.
And the racially polarized voting in the State ensures that
the second and third are met as well. The Black electorate
within the circle and the White population surrounding it
vote as blocs and for different candidates. So when the
Black voters are dispersed among six predominantly White
districts, they lose all their electoral influence. Or, as we
recently described such a situation: Black voters have “the
potential to elect a representative of [their] own choice in a
possible district,” but “racially polarized voting prevents
[them] from doing so in the district as actually drawn be-
cause [they are] submerged in a larger white voting popu-
lation.” Cooper v. Harris, 581 U. S. 285, 302 (2017) (altera-
tion omitted). That means a Section 2 suit will be decided
——————
4 The majority’s view that Allen “did not address the central issue
here,” ante, at 31—the meaning of Section 2 and appropriate content of
the Gingles framework—is one of the more perplexing aspects of today’s
decision. I will have more to say about that assertion below, see infra,
at 35–37, 39, n. 11, but for now, I invite readers to do a bit of exploration
on their own. Just search for every quotation from Allen in this opinion—
in this paragraph of course, but all the rest too—and ask yourself
whether it is credible that Allen “did not address” the question of “our
understanding of §2 as Gingles construed it.” Ante, at 31; Allen, 599
U. S., at 19. Better yet, go read all of Allen. You will find that, on page
after page, it discusses precisely that issue—and offers a reading of Sec-
tion 2 and Gingles perfectly consonant with this dissent, and fundamen-
tally at odds with today’s majority opinion. See, e.g., Allen, 599 U. S., at
11–14, 17–19, 24–30, 37–38, 39, 41; id., at 30–33 (plurality opinion).22 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
based on the totality of the circumstances. And, as to that,
I have posited facts making the inquiry straightforward:
Recall that the hypothetical State has a long history of ra-
cial discrimination, which continues to show up, in mani-
fold ways, in social conditions and political activity. So Sec-
tion 2 (before today) would have stopped the hypothesized
cracking plan and, in so doing, worked as Congress in-
tended—to give Black voters no less a chance than their
White neighbors to participate in the political process and
elect their preferred representatives.
And my hypothetical is not so different from the Louisi-
ana districting scheme that was challenged in the dilution
suit underlying this case. It is just that instead of arguing
about the need for one majority-minority district, the plain-
tiffs in that suit were asserting the need for a second. As
the majority relates, Louisiana drew its post-2020 census
map with one mainly Black district and five mainly White
ones. See ante, at 11–12. (For context, Louisiana’s popula-
tion is about one-third African American.) The dilution
plaintiffs alleged that there was another natural (i.e., polit-
ically cohesive and geographically contiguous) Black-major-
ity district which the Louisiana Legislature had effectively
cracked. See ante, at 15 (showing the plaintiffs’ proposed
district). The residents of that possible district wound up
dispersed among the State’s other districts, where (given
racially polarized voting) their preferences would count for
nothing. According to the plaintiffs, that plan violated Sec-
tion 2 by giving Black voters less opportunity than their
White counterparts to elect representatives of their choice.
Based on a voluminous record, including mountains of
statistical data and five days of testimony, the District
Court found that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail. See
Robinson v. Ardoin, 605 F. Supp. 3d 759, 766 (MD La.
2022). Their proposed second district—in which Black vot-
ers could “easily” form a majority—was reasonably config-
ured according to traditional districting criteria. Id., atCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
23
KAGAN, J., dissenting
821; see id., at 827–831. And without that district, Black
voters’ choices would be swamped: The evidence showed
that as few as 12% of White voters in Louisiana would sup-
port Black-preferred candidates in statewide contests. Id.,
at 841–842. With the Gingles preconditions thus satisfied,
the court assessed the totality of the circumstances and
found that it, too, supported relief. See, e.g., 605
F. Supp. 3d, at 845 (recounting, among other things, the
State’s long history of racial discrimination, including that
“Louisiana has never had a Black Congressperson elected
from a non-majority-Black district”). And so the court or-
dered the State to draw a new map.
The court thus applied, in an altogether unexceptionable
way, the framework used for the last 40 years to evaluate
Section 2 vote-dilution claims. The court followed Gingles,
along with the two fistfuls of this Court’s decisions affirm-
ing its framework. See supra, at 20–21. And most crucially,
the court followed Section 2 itself, because all our prior de-
cisions faithfully implemented the fundamental choice Con-
gress made in amending that section: to make liability turn
(as the Court did in White) not on the motives behind but
on the “results” of an electoral practice like districting.
III
The majority today does just the opposite. Under the
guise of “updat[ing]” the Gingles framework, ante, at 26, 29,
32, the majority transforms it—and in so doing, betrays
Congress’s choice. At each of Gingles’s steps, the majority
imposes new proof requirements, serving a common objec-
tive: to convert an effects test, as commanded by Congress,
into a purpose test, as preferred by this Court. Nearly half
a century ago, Congress amended Section 2 to repudiate
Bolden’s limitation of that provision’s reach to intentional
discrimination. See supra, at 13–16. Today’s decision re-
turns Section 2 to what it was under Bolden. Now, as then,
vote-dilution plaintiffs will have to show more than vote24 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
dilution: They will have to show, as well, race-based motive.
Now, as then, that requirement will make success in their
suits nearly impossible, even if an electoral practice has in
fact “minimize[d] or cancel[ed] out” minority citizens’ “vot-
ing strength.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 25 (quoting Gingles, 478
U. S., at 47). It is as if Congress had never amended Section
2. I first show how that is the consequence of today’s “up-
dating”; I then address how the majority attempts to justify
what it has done. The upshot is that the majority, without
any good reason, has overturned Congress’s studied deter-
mination—along with this Court’s precedents upholding
it—about how to rectify racial inequalities in electoral poli-
tics.
A
Let’s first drop the majority’s misleading label. What the
majority gives us today is not an “updated Gingles frame-
work.” Ante, at 32. It is its own thing, deserving of its own
name. Maybe the Callais contrivance? Or if that seems too
immediately pejorative, just say that what the majority
does today is to impose the Callais requirements.
At their base, all those requirements have the same func-
tion: They force a vote-dilution plaintiff to prove that a
State adopted an election rule with racially discriminatory
intent. On the majority’s view, a rule diluting minority
votes—even making them count for nothing—poses no
problem if motivated by “nonracial factors.” Ante, at 24. So
a State has free rein to “use traditional districting factors”
even when they minimize or cancel out minority votes.
Ibid. And yet more practically important, a State may (so
says the majority) draw districts for any political purpose,
including for a purely “partisan purpose[]”—that is, to in-
crease one party’s electoral strength—no matter their racial
effects. Ante, at 25. For that reason, the majority insists, a
Section 2 plaintiff has “a special burden to overcome.” Ibid.
(quoting Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference ofCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
25
KAGAN, J., dissenting
the NAACP, 602 U. S. 1, 9 (2024) and Cooper, 581 U. S., at
308). The plaintiff “must disentangle race from politics by
proving that the former drove a district’s lines.” Ante, at 25
(quoting Alexander, 602 U. S., at 9, and Cooper, 581 U. S.,
at 308; emphasis deleted). In other words, he must show
that the State, in drawing that district, had not a political
but instead a racial motivation—that it acted for the spe-
cific purpose of weakening a minority group’s voting influ-
ence. The new Callais requirements, as I’ll soon discuss,
are all (concededly) designed to ensure that the plaintiff is
held to that “special burden”—which, as the Congress
amending Section 2 well understood, is nearly insuperable.5
——————
5 In responding to this dissent, the majority (on its opinion’s penulti-
mate page) appears to disclaim this reading. The majority notes first
(and this is true enough) that “the dissent states over and over again that
our decision requires a §2 plaintiff to prove discriminatory intent.” Ante,
at 35. And then the majority’s response: No, a vote-dilution plaintiff need
show only that a redistricting “denies members of a racial group the same
‘opportunity’ as other voters to elect the candidates they prefer.” Ibid.
That formulation is right, and as shown above, it demands an inquiry
into the effects of a scheme on voters’ opportunity to elect candidates. See
supra, at 14–15, 17–22. Similarly, the majority claims that it is doing
just what White did. See ante, at 35. And White, recall, made an “in-
tensely local appraisal” of whether an electoral scheme, when “overlaid”
on historical, social, and political “realities,” in fact operated to dilute
minority voting strength—in other words, applied an effects test. See
supra, at 10–12, and n. 1. So the majority closes its opinion by suggest-
ing it is not requiring a vote-dilution plaintiff to present evidence of “dis-
criminatory intent.” Ante, at 35. Which, if true, would be welcome news.
And welcomer still if lower courts took those last words seriously and
allowed Section 2 claims to succeed even absent proof of race-based pur-
pose. But I suspect they will not. Because they, like I, will have read the
many pages leading up to the majority’s coda. And those pages, both in
setting out and in explaining the Callais requirements, make clear that
a Section 2 plaintiff has a “special burden” to “demonstrate” that racial
rather than political (or other) reasons “drove a district’s lines”—i.e., that
“the State intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less
opportunity.” Ante, at 25–26, 29 (emphasis added). So what the majority
hopes to accomplish by its last-minute attempt to associate itself with an
effects inquiry is something of a mystery. To try to disguise what it is26 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
But before becoming so granular, it is worth asking what
precedents support the majority’s insistence on evidence of
racially discriminatory intent. By now, I hope, no reader
will think those precedents concern Section 2. Our Section
2 precedents are quite to the contrary: It is “patently clear,”
Allen recently summarized, that because Section 2 liability
“turns on the presence of discriminatory effects, not dis-
criminatory intent,” a plaintiff need not demonstrate a
“purpose of racial discrimination.” 599 U. S., at 25 (quoting
Gingles, 478 U. S., at 71, n. 34). So the majority must go
further afield. Its citations regarding the plaintiff ’s “spe-
cial burden” of showing that race rather than politics (or
anything else) motivated the State are from this Court’s ra-
cial-gerrymandering jurisprudence. See ante, at 25 (citing
Alexander and Cooper). But racial gerrymandering claims
and vote-dilution claims are, despite some superficial simi-
larities, different legal beasts. Contra, ante, at 36 (confus-
ing and conflating the two). Plaintiffs bringing the former
need not have suffered vote dilution, nor do they invoke Sec-
tion 2. Their claim is simply that purposeful racial sort-
ing—all on its own, irrespective of any vote-minimizing ef-
fects—violates the Fourteenth Amendment.6 In such a case
——————
really doing? To somehow absolve itself of responsibility? Or could it
just be that, in responding to this dissent, the majority can do nothing
but agree?
6 The first case to recognize a racial gerrymandering claim was Shaw
v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630 (1993). There, five White residents objected to the
North Carolina Legislature’s decision to create two majority-Black dis-
tricts. But the plaintiffs did not—and could not—argue that the map
diluted their votes. See id., at 641. Instead, they contended that the
legislature’s “deliberate [race-based] segregation of voters” violated their
Fourteenth Amendment right to “a color-blind electoral process.” Id., at
641–642. The Court held that the plaintiffs had a “cognizable claim”—
that the Fourteenth Amendment could be violated by such intentional
sorting. Id., at 634. And later decisions elaborated that a racial gerry-
mandering claim would trigger strict scrutiny if a plaintiff “prove[d] that
race was the predominant factor motivating” the drawing of district
lines. Cooper v. Harris, 581 U. S. 285, 291 (2017).Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
27
KAGAN, J., dissenting
(as I have elsewhere explained), it is of course essential to
have proof of race-based purpose. See Cooper, 581 U. S., at
291–292, 308. But not so when the claim is for vote dilution,
brought under a statute that (in Allen’s words again)
“clearly rejected treating discriminatory intent as a re-
quirement for liability.” 599 U. S., at 37. In that context,
putting a burden on the plaintiff to show that district lines
were “driven by” racial rather than political (or other) fac-
tors, ante, at 29, is to reject everything this Court has ever
said about Congress’s Section 2 choice.
The majority’s misplaced focus on purpose shows up first,
and most critically, in its recasting of the first Gingles pre-
condition. That threshold requirement, as the majority
acknowledges, has always functioned to ensure that a mi-
nority community is large and geographically compact
enough to elect a representative of its choice in a reasonably
configured district. See ante, at 8, 29; supra, at 18–19. So
the illustrative maps most vote-dilution plaintiffs submit
show exactly that—how a reasonable majority-minority dis-
trict could be created. But now, the majority says, the first
precondition must be devoted to flushing out discriminatory
purpose on the part of the State, by excluding the possibility
that its districting plan arose from nonracial motives. See
ante, at 29–30. So the plaintiffs’ alternative maps have to
satisfy (as well or better than the State’s own) every per-
missible districting criterion the State specifies, includ-
ing—and this is the kicker—all its “political goals.” Ibid.
Those goals include the “partisan distribution” of districts
within the State—say, that six seats should be held by one
party and none by the other. Ibid. Likewise, they appar-
ently encompass the partisan balance within any district—
say, to ensure “a specific margin of victory” for a candidate.
Ibid. Only if the plaintiffs’ maps “achieve [all those] goals
just as well” as the State’s plan, the majority intones, can
those maps “help to ‘disentangle race’ from politics”—or,
otherwise said, show that the State’s plan was “driven by28 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
racial” motives. Ibid. (quoting again Alexander, 602 U. S.,
at 6—a racial gerrymandering, not Section 2 dilution, case).
That change alone is likely to bring vote-dilution suits
(already hard to win) to a screeching halt. To see how, re-
turn to the circle hypothetical—until now, the paradigmatic
case of vote dilution, because the State there prevents Black
(but not White) voters from having an opportunity to elect
their preferred representative, as Section 2 demands. See
supra, at 1–2. The legislature, recall, has sliced the major-
ity-Black circle district into six pie pieces, with each added
to (and only marginally affecting) a predominantly-White
district. Before today, the first Gingles precondition is met
with ease, just with a picture of the old district: Yes, that
picture would say, Black voters can form—in fact, have
formed—a majority in a district drawn consistent with tra-
ditional principles. See supra, at 21. But after today? Sup-
pose the State, per the majority’s instructions, asserts that
it cracked the African American electorate because it wants
six safe Republican districts. Now the plaintiffs’ illustra-
tive map, insists the majority, must also have six safe Re-
publican districts. But given that race and partisan prefer-
ence are linked (with Black citizens mainly voting
Democratic), such a map cannot be drawn. Any map with
a majority-Black district will not be a map with all Repub-
lican seats. And so, the majority decides, a Section 2 suit
must fail at the outset—even though the State has deprived
Black citizens of any opportunity to elect representatives of
their choice. At least where such common race-based voting
patterns hold, States now have an automatic political-ger-
rymandering defense to vote-dilution claims.
Yet more, the majority’s reworking of Gingles’s first pre-
condition (contra its assurance) will doom vote-dilution
suits even when majority and minority voters support dif-
ferent candidates within a single party. Take an example
offered by the Solicitor General, whose ideas about how to
upend Gingles the majority largely filches. See Brief forCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
29
KAGAN, J., dissenting
United States as Amicus Curiae 20–31. In that hypothet-
ical, Black, Hispanic, and White voters residing in Harlem
all vote mainly for Democrats, but have “different candi-
dates of choice.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 119. The Solicitor General
maintains that if the district lines “favor[] one of those ra-
cial groups”—let’s say, the Black voters—“that’s the sort of
situation where Section 2 could come in.” Ibid. The major-
ity agrees, because there the State’s preference for one
party could not explain the district lines drawn. See ante,
at 27, 29–30. But under the majority’s test, the legislature
could easily invoke other political, as well as non-political,
goals to justify the lines and thus preclude liability. Sup-
pose the State asserted that it drew the lines to protect an
incumbent, who just so happened to be favored by Black
residents. Or suppose the State said it wanted to increase
(or decrease or maintain) the district’s partisan competi-
tiveness (created by its ratio of Democrats to Republicans),
which just coincidentally gave Black voters more influence.
Or suppose the State said that it wished to keep the existing
district’s core intact (itself a frequent districting criterion,
see ante, at 24), rather than make the changes needed to
give non-Black voters greater electoral opportunity. The
possibilities are endless. And each would have the same
result. Because a Section 2 plaintiff ’s map could not as well
advance the bespoke political (or other) goal(s) favoring the
Black voters’ chosen candidate, the suit would fail—even if
non-Black votes, election year in and election year out, had
been made to count for nothing.
Congress, as should by now be clear, made a different
choice. In amending Section 2, Congress opted for the ef-
fects test of White over the purpose test of Bolden. See su-
pra, at 13–16. And it did so largely because of the unfeasi-
bility of countering a State’s non-race-based justification for
a given districting decision. See supra, at 15–16. Such a
demand, the authors of the Senate compromise explained,
would impose “an inordinately difficult burden,” precluding30 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
a remedy for even the most “egregious” cases of vote dilu-
tion. Senate Report, at 36–37. Yet that is exactly the bur-
den the majority makes Section 2 plaintiffs bear—and at
the first threshold condition. The majority makes no effort
to explain how minority voters can meet its new require-
ment. How they can devise a map satisfying (at least as
well as the State’s own) each of the State’s asserted political
and other goals while also creating (or maintaining) a ma-
jority-minority district.7 Or assuming they cannot draw
such a map, whether they may produce other evidence of
racially discriminatory motive to meet (or else bypass) the
first Callais requirement. Or if they may offer such evi-
dence, how (if at all) it might differ from the kind generally
needed to prevail in a racial gerrymandering suit—i.e., “di-
rect evidence,” like “leaked e-mails” from legislators pro-
fessing the desire to reduce a racial group’s voting strength.
Alexander, 602 U. S., at 8. Presumably, the majority thinks
that the details do not much matter. Once Section 2 has
been transformed, via a change to Gingles’s first
——————
7 If that assignment does not sound fanciful enough, the majority im-
poses yet a weirder requirement on plaintiffs’ maps—and one Allen spe-
cifically rejected. “[I]n drawing illustrative maps,” today’s majority
holds, “plaintiffs cannot use race.” Ante, at 29; see ibid. (“[A]n illustra-
tive map in which race was used has no value in proving a §2 plaintiff ’s
case”). What exactly the majority means by “use” is left unclear. But
assuming the majority means to bar plaintiffs from taking account of
race when showing how a majority-minority district could be created, it
is both incoherent and inconsistent with Section 2 and Gingles. I cannot
do better than Allen did in explaining why. In that case, Alabama took
much the view the majority does: that a Section 2 plaintiff ’s illustrative
maps “cannot have been ‘based’ on race.” 599 U. S., at 24. But Allen
spurned the notion. “Section 2 itself demands consideration of race,” we
explained, because its implementation requires knowing “whether addi-
tional majority-minority districts can be drawn.” Id., at 30–31 (emphasis
in original). And indeed, we continued, “[t]hat is the whole point” of the
maps “adduced at the first step of Gingles.” Id., at 33 (emphasis deleted).
To say that those maps must be “race-blind” is thus to “reject [the Gin-
gles] framework outright”—really, to insist that it “be overruled.” Ibid.
Quite right.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
31
KAGAN, J., dissenting
precondition, from a ban on racially dilutive effects (à la
White) to a ban on race-based motives (à la Bolden), virtu-
ally all vote-dilution cases will fail anyway. The majority
has thus nullified Congress’s decision to provide a remedy,
without proof of intent, for state action that “results in” a
minority group’s lesser opportunity “to elect representa-
tives.” §10301.
But the majority is not yet done thwarting Congress’s ob-
jective. Maybe in some exceptional case, a State will fail to
assert a goal, like political gerrymandering, that the plain-
tiff ’s map cannot replicate. Then, the majority’s makeover
of the second and third Gingles preconditions comes into
play, again to convert Section 2 into its opposite—a statute
turning on discriminatory intent, not effects. Contra, Allen,
599 U. S., at 25 (Ҥ2 turns on the presence of discriminatory
effects, not discriminatory intent”). Until today, the second
and third preconditions focused simply on racially polarized
voting: Plaintiffs had to show that minority citizens vote co-
hesively, but cannot elect their preferred candidates be-
cause majority citizens vote as a bloc for others. See supra,
at 18–19. Now the majority introduces a new requirement
to impede Section 2 suits: “[T]he plaintiffs must provide an
analysis that controls for party affiliation.” Ante, at 30.
That means if minority citizens vote mainly for one party
and majority citizens vote mainly for another, none of that
difference can count toward meeting the second and third
preconditions. So in offering evidence of polarized voting
preferences, a plaintiff must remove from the equation . . .
polarized voting preferences. For in most places (even if not
in Harlem), partisan difference is the way those divergent
preferences are expressed—and the way one racial group’s
vote can swamp another’s, again and again. The majority
argues that its new requirement is needed to rule out the
possibility that the State districted as it did for partisan,
rather than racial, reasons. See ibid. But the State’s intent
is not what is supposed to matter in a Section 2 suit.32 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
Congress amended Section 2 (need I say again?) to ensure
that it would function as an effects test. The majority
wishes a different statute, and makes it so.8
And so too for Section 2’s “totality of circumstances” in-
quiry. §10301(b). Should some litigant miraculously arrive
at that stage of a vote-dilution suit, he will find it trans-
formed. The “totality” test, today’s majority insists, must
focus on only one thing: “intentional present-day voting dis-
crimination.” Ante, at 31. But that is neither what Con-
gress said nor what Congress meant when it added the
phrase “totality of circumstances”—obviously referring to
multiple things—to Section 2. See Allen, 599 U. S., at 26 (A
“single-minded” concentration on “only one circumstance[]”
“cannot be squared with [Section 2’s] demand”). Derived
from White, that phrase demands the kind of “intensely lo-
cal appraisal” the Court there used to evaluate a districting
plan’s “impact” on a minority group’s access to the political
process. 412 U. S., at 769–770. That appraisal of course
included evidence relating to “intentional present-day vot-
ing discrimination.” Ante, at 31. But it included as well the
continuing effects of past discrimination—and not only in
politics but in other spheres of life. See White, 412 U. S., at
767–769; supra, at 11–12. The majority’s flattening of the
prescribed inquiry mirrors Bolden’s conversion of White
into a test for illicit motive. See supra, at 12–13. But it was
precisely to reverse that shift that Congress enacted Sec-
tion 2’s current “totality” language.
——————
8 As with the first Callais requirement, see supra, at 30–31, the major-
ity does not address whether plaintiffs can bypass this second require-
ment if they have evidence that the districting decision was “driven by
racial considerations,” ante, at 29. In other words, what happens if the
second Callais requirement is unsatisfied (because race and partisan
preference go hand in hand) but there is still evidence that race “drove”
the “district’s lines”? Ante, at 25, 36. Presumably the claim should be
able to proceed to the “totality” test, but the majority leaves us guessing.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
33
KAGAN, J., dissenting
The consequences of the new Callais requirements show
up immediately, in the majority’s disposition of this case.
The District Court may have heard five days of testimony;
may have properly applied the (old) Gingles factors; may
have explained in 110 fact-intensive pages why the vote-di-
lution plaintiffs were likely to prevail. See supra, at 22–23.
But the majority thinks it “eas[y]” to overturn all that
court’s work in a few paragraphs. Ante, at 32. The plain-
tiffs flunked the (new) first Gingles precondition because
their illustrative map, although showing a reasonably con-
figured majority-minority district, “fail[ed] to meet the
State’s political goal[]” of protecting every incumbent Re-
publican Representative. Ante, at 33. The plaintiffs came
up short on the (new) second and third preconditions be-
cause their showing of racially polarized voting—“that
black and white voters consistently supported different can-
didates”—“did not control for partisan preferences.” Ante,
at 34. And anyway, the plaintiffs could not prevail under
the (new) “totality of circumstances” test because they did
not show “that the State’s challenged map was the result of
intentional racial discrimination”; all the plaintiffs’ evi-
dence—like the dearth of Black-preferred candidates ever
elected in the State—could just be the result of “politics.”
Ante, at 34–35. Bang, bang, bang. It is like shooting fish
in a barrel. Once the State can rely on any political goal of
its devising—and once “inter-party racial polarization”
serves to “undercut” rather than “strengthen[]” a vote-dilu-
tion claim—no plausibly existing evidence in this case could
have made a difference. Ante, at 30, 34 (emphasis deleted).
And nothing is special about this majority-minority dis-
trict; as the Callais requirements have eliminated it today,
so they will eliminate other and older ones in the years to
come. Recall that this majority-Black district (which is Dis-
trict 6) was Louisiana’s second. See supra, at 22–23. The
State’s District 2 has had a Black majority since 1983, when
a vote-dilution suit forced its creation. If Louisiana were34 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
tomorrow to slice up District 2, dispersing its Black resi-
dents among the rest, it is hard to see how the now judi-
cially amended Section 2 could stand in the way. The State
presumably would assert as its “political goal” an all-Re-
publican congressional delegation; in other words, it would
announce a partisan gerrymander. Ante, at 25, 33. And
because of the severe racial polarization in the State, that
goal would be incompatible with maintaining District 2 as
is. So those advocating for its majority-minority composi-
tion would almost surely lose at the first Callais require-
ment (and, as above, at the others as well). Repeated often
enough across the country, the same districting practice—
really, hinging only on the partisan ambitions (or restraint)
of state legislatures—could destroy most of the majority-
minority districts that in the past 40 years the Voting
Rights Act created. The Callais requirements have thus
laid the groundwork for the largest reduction in minority
representation since the era following Reconstruction. Un-
der cover of “updat[ing]” and “realign[ing]” this greatest of
statutes, ante, at 29, the majority makes a nullity of Section
2 and threatens a half-century’s worth of gains in voting
equality.
B
There is only one “special burden” appropriate to deciding
this case. Ante, at 25. And it is not the utterly novel one
that the majority imposes on Section 2 vote-dilution plain-
tiffs to “disentangle” state motives. Ibid. Rather, it is the
well-settled one that the Court itself must meet before over-
turning precedent about the meaning of a statute. Our law
is clear. Stare decisis—the presumption that “today’s Court
should stand by yesterday’s decisions”—“carries enhanced
force” when the decision in question “interprets a statute.”
Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U. S. 446, 455–
456 (2015). That is because our statutory, unlike our con-
stitutional, rulings can always be changed by CongressCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
35
KAGAN, J., dissenting
itself. See id., at 456. (Just recall how Congress rejected
our decision in Bolden.) When this Court has said what a
statute means—and Congress has said nothing to the con-
trary—a “superpowered form of stare decisis” takes hold,
which only a “superspecial justification” can overcome. Id.,
at 458. Or, as one Justice has put it, there is in that cir-
cumstance a “nearly impregnable . . . shield” protecting the
decision. Minerva Surgical, Inc. v. Hologic, Inc., 594 U. S.
559, 579 (2021) (ALITO, J., dissenting).
This Court, as noted above, invoked that shield to uphold
Gingles just three Terms ago. See supra, at 20–21. In Al-
len, Alabama proposed a way of limiting Gingles to make it
harder to win a vote-dilution suit. We responded that “Con-
gress is undoubtedly aware” of how this Court has con-
strued Section 2. 599 U. S., at 39. And, we said, “[i]t can
change that if it likes.” Ibid. “But until and unless it does,
statutory stare decisis counsels our staying the course.”
Ibid. (citing Kimble, 576 U. S., at 456); see also 599 U. S.,
at 42, 43, n. 1 (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring in part) (invok-
ing “stringent statutory stare decisis” rules and noting that
“[i]n the past 37 years” Congress “ha[s] not disturbed Gin-
gles”). And if that’s not enough (though why not?), then
there’s this. JUSTICE ALITO dissented in Allen in a way that
prefigured today’s opinion, proposing there that the Gingles
framework be changed to reflect his own views about Sec-
tion 2’s text and constitutional context. See 599 U. S., at
103–104, 108–109; compare ante, at 20–26. The Court
noted his argument that “[t]he Gingles framework should
be [re]interpreted”—and then said no. 599 U. S., at 39,
n. 10 (alterations in original). “[A]s we have explained,” the
Court stated, “Gingles effectuates the delicate legislative
bargain that §2 embodies.” Ibid.; see id., at 17–19; supra,
at 13–15. “And statutory stare decisis,” the Court con-
cluded, “counsels strongly in favor of not undoing” that
“compromise.” 599 U. S., at 39, n. 10 (alteration omitted).
Apparently, though, statutory stare decisis is now done36 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
“counsel[ing],” id., at 39, and n. 10; it is not so much as men-
tioned in today’s opinion.
That void is more remarkable still given Allen’s own re-
affirmation of Gingles on the merits (even putting aside its
precedential status). Just control-find for all my citations
of Allen (or better yet read the decision), and you will have
a good idea of its character. In addition to awarding Gingles
the highest form of stare decisis protection, Allen (1) traced
the history of Section 2’s amendment as I have, focusing on
Congress’s rejection of Bolden’s motive inquiry in favor of
White’s effects test, see 599 U. S., at 10–14; (2) explained as
I have how each part of the Gingles framework functions
and how the Court has used that framework “[f]or the past
forty years” “in one §2 case after another,” 599 U. S., at 17–
19; (3) showed how the District Court’s analysis (which
closely resembles the one here) conformed in all respects to
Gingles, see 599 U. S., at 19–23;9 and (4) rejected the no-
tions that the Gingles framework should not apply to single-
member districting or that it violates the Fifteenth Amend-
ment, see 599 U. S., at 38–42; infra, at 41. The majority’s
main claim for why Allen nonetheless has no relevance here
is that the decision “was about” Alabama’s “specific argu-
ment” that a vote-dilution suit could succeed only if the
State’s map deviated from a “race-neutral benchmark.”
Ante, at 31. Well, sure, Allen was about that too. And in
rebuffing that argument, it used reasoning that equally dis-
credits the new Callais requirements.10 But even put that
——————
9 In that part of the opinion, the Court took note of JUSTICE THOMAS’s
complaint that “what the District Court did here is essentially no differ-
ent from what many courts have done for decades under this Court’s su-
perintendence.” 599 U. S., at 26, n. 3 (dissenting opinion). The Court’s
one-sentence response: “That is not such a bad definition of stare decisis.”
Ibid.
10 That is so because Alabama’s proposed “race-neutral benchmark”
and the majority’s Callais requirements operate on the same (mistaken)
logic. Alabama’s premise in urging the benchmark’s adoption was that
race-neutral reasons for districting should defeat a Section 2 suit; theCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
37
KAGAN, J., dissenting
aside. The key point here is that at every step of its multi-
step analysis, and in every part of its multi-part opinion,
Allen reaffirmed Gingles—the old Gingles, with its old un-
derstanding of what Congress did when amending Section
2. So Allen, too, demands that today’s majority, before mu-
tilating Gingles, possess a “superspecial justification.”
Kimble, 576 U. S., at 458.
And it does not have one. Not a superspecial justification;
not a special justification; not even an ordinary decent jus-
tification. On the statute’s text, on the statute’s constitu-
tional context, and on “historical developments” post-dating
the statute—the majority fails at every turn. Ante, at 26.
The majority’s textual analysis is long and winding and,
in its crucial move, wholly non-textual. The majority tells
us it will interpret the phrase “less opportunity than other
members of the electorate . . . to elect representatives of
their choice.” §10301(b); see ante, at 20. It then says a
number of things, to no apparent effect, about the compo-
nent terms “opportunity,” “other members of the elec-
torate,” and “elect.” Ante, at 20–21. And then, the majority
puts all that aside and begins to free solo. See ante, at 21–
22. What the provision promises minority voters, the ma-
jority says in the critical passage, is—and is only—“what-
ever opportunity results from the application of the State’s
——————
benchmark would show whether a districting plan in fact derived from
such reasons, or instead from impermissible race-based ones. See Allen,
599 U. S., at 23–24; Brief for Appellants in Allen v. Milligan, O. T. 2022,
Nos. 21–1086, 21–1087, pp. 43–46, 75. The Callais requirements are dif-
ferent in form but not in function: They too are designed to disentangle
race-based from race-neutral (e.g., partisan) reasons, on the (selfsame)
view that Section 2 liability should attach only to the former. See ante,
at 25, 29–30, 32. It is, then, not surprising that Allen’s primary ground
for rejecting Alabama’s benchmark also defeats the Callais require-
ments. Allen responded that Ҥ2 turns on the presence of discriminatory
effects, not discriminatory intent.” 599 U. S., at 25. So it would not mat-
ter that the benchmark (and likewise the majority’s alternative mecha-
nism) suggested race-neutral motives.38 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
combination of permissible criteria.” Ante, at 22. Can you
find that in the “less opportunity” phrase? What the major-
ity means is that if the State has used non-race-based cri-
teria (whether political or non-political) to draw its dis-
tricts, then Section 2 has nothing to say. Even though those
criteria produce a world (think about my cracked circle dis-
trict) in which minority voters, compared to their White
neighbors, have “less opportunity” to “elect representatives
of their choice,” a vote-dilution claim cannot prevail.
§10301(b). That can only happen, according to the major-
ity’s view, when the district lines arise from “[im]permissi-
ble,” race-based criteria—that is, when the State’s evident
intent was to strip minority voters of their opportunity to
elect. Ante, at 22. With that interpretation in mind, read
Congress’s “less opportunity” phrase again. It is miles
away.
And of course it is. Because, once more, the “less oppor-
tunity” standard was designed to focus on the “results” of a
state practice, not on its justifications. §10301(a). Congress
had seen again and again—when it amended Section 2 in
1982, had seen for over a century—how race-neutral elec-
tion procedures, including in districting, could produce dis-
criminatory results. See supra, at 7–8, 13, 15. Congress
knew States did not have to rely on impermissible, race-
based criteria to “minimize[] or cancel[] out [minority] vot-
ing strength.” Allen, 599 U. S., at 25. So when this Court
decided Bolden—which immunized race-neutral election
procedures unless a plaintiff could produce smoking-gun
evidence of discriminatory intent—Congress responded. It
did not, as I’ve described, opt for proportional representa-
tion; it enacted a standard that would take some work to
meet. See §10301; supra, at 19–20. But it most assuredly
did not amend Section 2 to give minority citizens only
“whatever” the “application of the State’s combination of
permissible” (i.e., “nonracial”) “criteria” produced. Ante, at
22, 24.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
39
KAGAN, J., dissenting
So the majority must turn elsewhere, and it next lands
on the Constitution. There, it begins in settled territory.
The Fifteenth Amendment, all agree, prohibits only pur-
poseful discrimination. See ante, at 23. But that amend-
ment, in addition, grants Congress the power to enforce it
by “appropriate legislation.” Even the majority concedes
that grant enables Congress to go further than the Amend-
ment would—to prohibit things by legislation that the
Amendment itself does not. See ante, at 22–23. The im-
portant issue is how far and how much. And here the ma-
jority makes an unprecedented claim. It contends that to
“ensure” compliance with the Fifteenth Amendment, Sec-
tion 2 must be construed to impose liability only when the
circumstances create a “strong inference” of intentional dis-
crimination. Ante, at 23. And more, the majority makes
clear that the circumstances will not do so when the State
can point to any remotely plausible race-neutral justifica-
tion—whether political or non-political—for the district
lines it has drawn. See ante, at 24 (“Properly understood,”
Section 2 “does not intrude on States’ prerogative to draw
districts based on nonracial factors”). That is so regardless
of how discriminatory its districting is in operation—even
to the point of “eliminating” in one fell swoop “all majority-
minority districts.” Ante, at 23.11
——————
11 Note that the majority’s constitutional analysis is based only on the
Fifteenth Amendment, and not at all on the Fourteenth. I would not
ordinarily think to make that blazingly obvious point. But in a second
attempt to distinguish this case from Allen (see supra, at 21, n. 4, for the
first unsuccessful one), the majority insists that whereas “Allen did not
discuss the Fourteenth Amendment,” “[h]ere, by contrast, [the Four-
teenth Amendment] is the linchpin of this suit.” Ante, at 32. That is not
so, at least in any way that matters to the majority’s analysis. The Four-
teenth Amendment serves as the entryway to that analysis, because the
suit in fact before us presents a racial gerrymandering claim. But as I
have described, the majority opts to decide that Fourteenth Amendment
claim by focusing on the earlier Section 2 vote-dilution claim from which
it arose. See supra, at 17, n. 2. The only Fourteenth Amendment40 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
I just called that claim “unprecedented,” and so it is: The
majority has conjured it out of thin air. From before Section
2 was amended until today, Congress was understood to
have constitutional power to ban practices resulting in un-
equal voting opportunities, irrespective of proof of racial
motive. And likewise, Congress was understood to have
power to prohibit vote-diluting practices even when a State
could proffer some sort of plausible race-neutral justifica-
tion. In this Court’s seminal decisions, we explained that
the phrase “appropriate legislation” in the Fifteenth
Amendment grants Congress “the same broad powers ex-
pressed in the Necessary and Proper Clause.” Katzenbach
v. Morgan, 384 U. S. 641, 650 (1966); see Katzenbach, 383
U. S., at 325–327. So Congress has “discretion” to deter-
mine “whether and what legislation is needed to secure” the
Amendment’s “guarantees.” Morgan, 384 U. S., at 651.
And that discretion, as critical here, extends to “outlaw[ing]
voting practices that are discriminatory in effect,” without
proof of intent. City of Rome, 446 U. S., at 173. In explain-
ing why, this Court first underscored the connection be-
tween past discriminatory intent and present discrimina-
tory results: Congress, we held, could decide that some
unintentional state action works to “freeze the effect of past
[purposeful] discrimination.” Id., at 176. And that was not
all. Congress also could enact an effects test, we held, as
the appropriate way of preventing current intentional dis-
crimination—a sort of prophylactic rule responding to the
“risk” (often made reality in American history) of a State’s
using ostensibly race-neutral practices to cover
——————
“holding” here is that a court may not draw race-based district lines with-
out a compelling interest—something we have made plain many times
before. See ante, at 8–11. The real work of the opinion is in deciding
that compliance with Section 2 could not have given Louisiana a compel-
ling interest because that provision, as construed today, did not require
any change to the State’s map. And that analysis is based only on Sec-
tion 2 and the Fifteenth Amendment—exactly the subjects Allen covered.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
41
KAGAN, J., dissenting
impermissible goals. See id., at 177; see also Katzenbach,
383 U. S., at 309, 335.
And if those decisions are too ancient for today’s majority,
it should consider (again) Allen, from three Terms ago.
There, Alabama made an argument, similar to the major-
ity’s, that the effects-based framework of Section 2 and Gin-
gles too far strayed from the Fifteenth Amendment’s ban on
intentional discrimination. We stomped on that objection.
“[T]he prior decisions of this Court,” we stated, “foreclose
any argument that Congress may not, pursuant to §2 [of the
Fifteenth Amendment], outlaw voting practices that are
discriminatory in effect.” 599 U. S., at 41; see id., at 45
(opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.) (“[T]he constitutional argument
presented by Alabama is not persuasive in light of the
Court’s precedents”). Section 2’s “ban on electoral changes
that are discriminatory in effect,” we continued, “is an ap-
propriate method of promoting the purposes of the Fif-
teenth Amendment.” Id., at 41. And if that were not
enough, one final way of driving home the point: “[W]e are
not persuaded” by the view that the “effects test” of Section
2 “as interpreted in Gingles exceeds the remedial authority
of Congress.” Ibid.
Those well-established precepts permit Congress to do
what Congress did when it amended Section 2—prohibit
electoral schemes based on their vote-diluting effects, re-
gardless whether a State could offer up some race-neutral
explanation. Congress then knew that it possessed such
enforcement power; our decisions settling the issue were
landmarks of the civil rights era. And Congress decided to
use its authority. It did not make asserted state interests
irrelevant: Those interests, indeed, had to be considered in
the “totality of circumstances” inquiry Congress prescribed.
§10301(b); see supra, at 20. But neither did Congress make
those interests a nearly impregnable shield, as the majority
does today. It understood, just as the Court had, that even
race-neutral actions could perpetuate purposeful racial42 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
discrimination. And it realized, again in the same vein as
the Court, that race-neutral explanations could conceal
race-based intent. See supra, at 15–16. Today’s majority
makes plain its disdain for those views. See ante, at 22–26.
But the Fifteenth Amendment gave the power to enforce its
guarantees not to this Court but to Congress.
So the majority moves on again, now to a grab-bag of “de-
velopments” that it somehow thinks license it to rewrite a
statute. Ante, at 26–29. The majority first summons the
slogan of Shelby County, in which the Court ordained itself
the arbiter of when civil rights laws are no longer needed.
“‘[T]hings have changed dramatically,’” today’s majority
echoes, pointing to increases in African American voting
registration and to the success of “‘African-Americans at-
tain[ing] political office’”—“particularly in the South,
where many §2 suits arise.” Ante, at 26 (quoting Shelby
County, 570 U. S., at 547, 553). No doubt that is so, in large
measure because of the Voting Rights Act. But it is a sepa-
rate question whether those gains will endure once the Act’s
protections are gone. See Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 590
(Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (noting the fallacy of “throwing
away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not get-
ting wet”). And surely—but apparently not—the proper ac-
tor to answer that question is Congress. For one thing, it
likely has a fuller understanding of the issue. I will be in-
terested to see, for example, whether time will vindicate the
majority’s view that the “great strides” made in African
American office-holding, “particularly in the South,” will
hold up after the issuance of this opinion. Ante, at 26. My
own guess is not. See supra, at 33–34. But honestly, the
American people pay no Member of this Court to make
those predictive policy judgments—and more important,
the Constitution does not allow us to base our decisions on
them. It is for the people’s representatives in Congress to
decide when the Nation need no longer worry about the di-
lution of minority voting strength. So long as Congress hasCite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
43
KAGAN, J., dissenting
not done so—and it has not—this Court has no right to can-
cel (sorry, “update”) a duly enacted statute on the theory
that it knows better.
Indeed, the majority’s “things have changed” stance here
is yet less defensible than in Shelby County. That is be-
cause Section 2, unlike the now-defunct Section 5, itself re-
sponds to change, so no external “fix” is needed. Section 5
selected jurisdictions for preclearance based on past condi-
tions; so if the provision’s last authorization was many
years in the past, the mechanism could appear outdated.
See Shelby County, 570 U. S., at 551 (“Coverage today is
based on decades-old data and eradicated practices”). Sec-
tion 2, by contrast, does not run on historical data. Liability
attaches based only on present electoral practices and the
present discrimination they “result[] in.” §10301(a). A
plaintiff must prove that the political process is “not equally
open to participation” by all citizens at the time of suit; if he
cannot, he loses. Ibid. There is thus no danger, as Shelby
County put it, that “current burdens” are not “justified by
current needs.” 570 U. S., at 536. Under Section 2, they
must be.
The Gingles preconditions yet further anchor Section 2
suits in the here-and-now by working as built-in sunset
clauses. The first precondition is met only if a racial group
is (in the present) geographically concentrated. See supra,
at 18–19. That means as residential segregation decreases
in a State, Section 2 becomes unavailable as a remedy. See
Allen, 599 U. S., at 28–29. Similarly, the second and third
preconditions can be satisfied only if voting (again, in the
present) is racially polarized. See supra, at 18–19. So as
racial bloc voting recedes, Section 2 ceases to operate. And
racial desegregation and depolarization are not just possi-
ble in theory; they are happening in fact—and at speed—in
many parts of the country. See Brief for Nicholas O. Steph-
anopoulos as Amicus Curiae 16–29. Consistent with those
trends, the number of successful Section 2 vote-dilution44 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
suits (always fairly small) has declined every decade since
the statute was amended. Katz Brief 6. In short, as “things
change dramatically,” Section 2 self-liquidates—and to a
fair extent, it already has. But in the places where, because
of local conditions, the law continues to work, the Court has
no warrant to speed its demise.
Nor is the majority aided by what it terms the emergence
of a “full-blown two-party system” in “the States where §2
suits are most common.” Ante, at 27. As to that develop-
ment, the majority reiterates its persistent theme: When
racially polarized voting expresses itself in different party
preferences, district lines may reflect partisan rather than
racial motives, and so Section 2 should drop out of the pic-
ture. See ante, at 27, 30, 32. But as an initial matter, the
majority’s newly formulated test will eliminate the lion’s
share of Section 2 claims even when racially polarized vot-
ing occurs within a single party—as in the Solicitor Gen-
eral’s Harlem example, discussed above. See supra, at 28–
29. The State could not then assert a partisan-gerryman-
dering defense, but it could invoke a host of other race-neu-
tral justifications, like incumbency protection or district
continuity, to ward off liability. In short, the majority’s test
fails to save Section 2 even for the “intra-party [racial] dis-
parities” that the majority asserts Congress had in mind.
Ante, at 27.
And more fundamentally, the majority is wrong on its
history. By 1982 (the year of Section 2’s amendment), Con-
gress well knew that “race is often correlated with party
preference,” because that was increasingly the case. Ibid.
Senate hearings were replete with testimony about that
growing correlation, with opponents of the House’s “results
in” language (Senator Hatch and his camp) questioning wit-
nesses about why “minority groups alone” should be “im-
mune to partisan or ideological gerrymandering.” Senate
Report, at 184; see id., at 172, n. 235; Hearings on S. 53 et
al. before the Subcomm. on the Constitution of the S.Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
45
KAGAN, J., dissenting
Comm. on the Judiciary, 97th Cong., 2d Sess., 649, 964–
965, 1255, 1376–1377 (1982). But those proponents of Bol-
den, of course, did not get their way: The Dole proposal
maintained the House’s emphasis on results, not motives.
See supra, at 14–15. So the majority’s appeal to an old “one-
party system,” ante, at 27, like the rest of its insistence on
disentangling partisanship and race, works not to uphold
but instead to overthrow the bargain Congress made.
The last argument about “post-Gingles development[s]”
worth mentioning is also the most dispiriting. Ibid. Seven
years ago, this Court held in Rucho v. Common Cause, 588
U. S. 684 (2019), that claims of political gerrymandering
are not justiciable in federal court. That was, in my view,
an ill-considered decision, whose adverse effects have never
been more obvious than today, as this country’s two major
parties compete in a race to the bottom. But to its (modest)
credit, the Rucho Court did not pretend that partisan ger-
rymanders were something in need of safeguarding. To the
contrary, the Court conceded that they were “incompatible
with democratic principles” and “lead[] to results that rea-
sonably seem unjust.” Id., at 718. (The Court’s rationale
was only that federal courts lack competence to deal with
gerrymanders, not that they were protected by law or ben-
eficial as policy.) Today, though, the majority straight-fac-
edly holds that the Voting Rights Act must be brought low
to make the world safe for partisan gerrymanders. See
ante, at 27–28. For how else, the majority reasons, can we
preserve the authority of States to engage in this practice
than by stripping minority citizens of their rights to an
equal political process? See ibid. And with that, the major-
ity as much as invites States to embark on a new round of
partisan gerrymanders—and makes an already bad prece-
dent into one still worse. It is not enough that Rucho has
harmed the whole body politic. Now, that decision also be-
comes the cudgel to diminish the rightful voting influence
of its minority citizens.46 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
IV
Congress amended Section 2 to reverse this Court’s deci-
sion in Bolden that the law barred only intentional racial
discrimination in voting. Based on a century of history,
Congress determined that such a limited ban would not be
enough to protect minority citizens’ voting rights. The leg-
islation Congress enacted to correct Bolden emerged from
vigorous debate and careful compromise, based mainly on
this Court’s decision in White. The new law denied a right
to proportional representation; it focused instead on the
“opportunity” that a given election practice granted minor-
ity citizens. But the requisite opportunity was not to be as-
sessed by a State’s intent or by its proffered justifications.
Rather, the lawfulness of an election practice was to turn
on its “results”—on whether it gave minority citizens a
lesser chance than their majority neighbors to participate
in politics and elect candidates. In making that choice, Con-
gress exercised its constitutional responsibility to enforce
the Fifteenth Amendment. And when called on to interpret
the new law, this Court—from Gingles all the way through
Allen—respected and implemented what Congress had
done.
Today’s majority does not. Its supposed “updating” of
Gingles overthrows Congress’s decision to make Section 2
liability hinge on an electoral practice’s effects—on how it
actually works. The new Callais requirements will effec-
tively insulate any practice, including any districting
scheme, said by a State to have any race-neutral justifica-
tion. That justification can sound in traditional districting
criteria, or else can sound in politics and partisanship. As
to the latter, the State need do nothing more than announce
a partisan gerrymander. Assuming the State has left be-
hind no smoking-gun evidence of a race-based motive (an
almost fanciful prospect), Section 2 will play no role.
“Whatever”—whatever—results from the State’s asserted
justification is all its minority citizens are entitled to. Ante,Cite as: 608 U. S. ____ (2026)
47
KAGAN, J., dissenting
at 22. Even if the State has deprived those citizens (but not
their majority neighbors) of all opportunity to “elect repre-
sentatives of their choice,” the law will not protect them.
§10301(b). It is Bolden redux, despite Congress’s repudia-
tion of that decision (and this Court’s precedents honoring
that rejection). The majority has made its own assessment
of current needs, see ante, at 26–28, and concluded that pre-
venting racial vote dilution does not count among them. So
once again, “in the absence of proof of intentional discrimi-
nation,” the right to vote gives minority citizens “nothing
more than the right to cast meaningless ballots.” Bolden,
446 U. S., at 104 (Marshall, J., dissenting).
The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave.
Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter. In
the States where that law continues to matter—the States
still marked by residential segregation and racially polar-
ized voting—minority voters can now be cracked out of the
electoral process. The decision here is about Louisiana’s
District 6. But so too it is about Louisiana’s District 2. See
supra, at 33–34. And so too it is about the many other dis-
tricts, particularly in the South, that in the last half-cen-
tury have given minority citizens, and particularly African
Americans, a meaningful political voice. After today, those
districts exist only on sufferance, and probably not for long.
If other States follow Louisiana’s lead, the minority citizens
residing there will no longer have an equal opportunity to
elect candidates of their choice. And minority representa-
tion in government institutions will sharply decline. At the
first stage of this judicial project to destroy the Voting
Rights Act, the Court maintained that Section 5 was no
longer needed because in recent decades “African-Ameri-
cans attained political office in record numbers.” Shelby
County, 570 U. S., at 553; see id., at 549. At this last stage,
the Court’s gutting of Section 2 puts that achievement in
peril. I dissent because Congress elected otherwise. I dis-
sent because the Court betrays its duty to faithfully48 LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS
KAGAN, J., dissenting
implement the great statute Congress wrote. I dissent be-
cause the Court’s decision will set back the foundational
right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opp
No comments:
Post a Comment