The Supreme Court is set to decide whether the creation of a second Black-majority congressional district in Louisiana violates the 14th Amendment. Its decision, coupled with those of similar cases progressing in lower federal courts, could impact the outcome of the 2026 midterms.
The justices will hear oral argument later this month in Louisiana v. Callais, a federal redistricting case challenging the makeup of the 6th congressional district in the Bayou State. The district was drawn by lawmakers in 2024 to strengthen Black Louisianians’ voting power, in accordance with the Voting Rights Act. Twelve Louisiana voters challenged the new map in federal court last spring, and the court scrapped the configuration, ruling that the district created an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The state appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, which has scheduled a hearing for March 24.
With Democrats and Republicans gearing up for the 2026 midterms and control over a narrowly divided House of Representatives, this case — alongside similar litigation over minority-majority districts in Georgia and Alabama — could play a role in deciding the balance of power in the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term. It’s also a test of how willing the courts are to ensure American democracy extends to its growing minority populations.
The razor-thin margin between Democrats and Republicans in the House — 214-218, respectively — means the 2026 midterms could come down to a number of factors, including the three congressional seats at issue in these cases, and both political parties are painstakingly aware of that, according to Kareem Crayton, the vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice.
“The courts’ decision will have an impact on whether these districts exist, and whether they exist or not makes it more likely that or less likely that African Americans will have an opportunity to elect a candidate,” he told Salon in a phone interview. “But also it has an impact on a partisan balance in Congress. So [if] these three seats — all a bunch of elected Democrats — are eliminated, then the road may be tougher for Democrats to get back to a majority. But conversely, it may be easier for Republicans to hang on to it.”
Louisiana v. Callais began as Callais v. Landry in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. Twelve non-Black plaintiffs filed suit against the state over the new congressional district lines drawn in 2024’s Senate Bill 8. Lawmakers redrew the district map as a result of the 2023 Robinson v. Ardoin decision, which required the creation of a second Black-majority district in the state in order for the congressional map to be compliant with section two of the Voting Rights Act.
In a Sept. 2024 motion in the case before the Supreme Court, lawyers for the twelve voters argued that lawmakers “used racial identity to sift Appellees and thousands of other voters into U.S. House districts,” overrepresenting Black voters and discriminating against others ahead of the 2024 election.
“Republicans are surrendering a vital seat in Congress that could well squander their narrow majority, yet both the previous map and Appellees’ alternative proposal in the district court protected all five Republican incumbents,” they added, calling on the justices to affirm the lower court ruling or dismiss the case.
The district court last year sided with the plaintiffs, ruling that lawmakers predominantly relied on race when redrawing the new congressional map and failed to prove it’s lines were narrowly tailored to further the state’s interest in complying with the VRA. The map, the court said, violated the equal protection clause’s protection against racial gerrymandering.
The state has since appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which last year placed a stay on the district court’s order barring use of the SB8 map. The Black plaintiffs from the Robinson case have joined the now-consolidated suit before the Supreme Court to ensure the second congressional district they fought for remains intact.
In a statement to Salon, Stuart Naifeh, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Manager of the Redistricting Project who’s representing the Robinson plaintiffs, accused the non-Black Louisianians behind the initial lawsuit of “trying to strip Black voters of a hard-fought victory” and a congressional map that provides them with “equal voice.”
“The outcome of Louisiana v. Callais will not only determine the next steps for Louisiana’s map and the application of federal laws to redistricting processes but will forecast the resiliency of our nation’s democratic principles of fair and equal representation moving forward,” Naifeh added.
A lawyer for the appellees did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
In both the other federal lawsuits that could influence the 2026 midterms, Caster v. Allen in Alabama and Pendergrass v. Raffensperger in Georgia, the plaintiffs have argued that the states’ redrawn congressional district maps violate section two of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits vote dilution for voters of color, and seek to defend the Black-majority districts drawn to remedy that violation. The GOP secretaries of state involved in the cases have raised arguments against the desired applications of the VRA for drawing the Black-majority districts at issue, citing the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing race-based affirmative action while asserting that such protective measures must eventually end.
At the core of these lawsuits lies a critical challenge to the strength of American democracy, particularly for Black Southerners. As the cases challenge the quantity of Black-majority districts in these states — and in the Georgia and Alabama cases, whether U.S. voting power is still racially disparate enough to require any remedy at all — they pose a threat to the tools of maintaining fair and equal representation for marginalized communities in an already weakened VRA.
“There’s been an attack on the enforcement tools like section five; section two remains a viable tool in the system, even though it’s been attacked and narrowed considerably by [the Supreme Court],” Crayton said. “Maintaining the tool means that in these states, the legislatures will understand that they have to respect the population that lives there. So maintaining these two districts in Louisiana, the two districts in Alabama, the cluster of districts in Georgia, will matter. It matters, of course, because we test the court’s legitimacy at being consistent with its interpretation of law.”
Recent research from the Brennan Center found that the creation of Black-majority districts in Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia increased Black voter participation by up to 6% and reduced the voter turnout gap between Black and white voters by 2-4%.
“In a world where we know that elections can sometimes turn on a dime because of narrow margins, these numbers matter,” Crayton said. “So just in terms of who wins and loses, that’s a difference. As I say, after the election is over, what issues and communities the elected member is going to prioritize also matters.”
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Nick Stephanopoulos, a Harvard election law professor who focuses on the American electoral system, added that Black-majority districts like the ones at issue in these cases are the “vehicle through which Black voters in these states obtain responsive representation in Congress; without them, the states’ maps would be biased against the needs and interests of minority voters.”
Stephanopoulos, however, disagreed on the level of impact these cases will have on Black voters’ voting power in these states — and whether their decisions will influence the outcome of the midterms. He said that, in principle, these challenges shouldn’t have much effect because they don’t change the state’s “underlying liability” under the VRA. Even if the Supreme Court agrees that the Louisiana congressional map is unconstitutional, there would still be a VRA violation that the state would need to remedy, he said.
“Section 2 litigation this cycle has already recognized the need for these districts, so the issue now is how to design maps that include these districts without violating the separate prohibition of racial gerrymandering,” Stephanopoulos told Salon in an email interview.
Democrats maintain, however, that the cases in Louisiana, Georgia and Alabama have the potential to undermine section two of the VRA. Republicans are attempting to revert back to their states’ previous “gerrymandered” congressional maps that did not allow for adequate competition for the House majority either, argued Marina Jenkins, the executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. The NDRC’s affiliate, the National Redistricting Foundation, was involved in the litigation for Robinson v. Ardoin.
“If these new, fair maps are dismantled, that would be at risk, and the ability for the American public to have their preferences translated to Congress, would certainly be at risk,” Jenkins told Salon in a phone interview.
Black voters overwhelmingly elect Democratic candidates in their elections and choose candidates based on how strongly they prioritize the community’s needs over their own political or personal interests. Maintaining these districts can be important in making sure they have lawmakers who even know how to identify their needs, much less adequately and consciously represent them at the federal level, Jenkins said. Having two Black-majority districts in Louisiana, for example, allowed Black voters to elect their preferred candidates to Congress “for the first time in nearly 30 years,” she added.
“They have elected Democrat new members of the Congressional Black Caucus,” Jenkins said. “If those districts change, certainly those seats would be at risk.”
Crayton’s assessment of the case’s importance assumes a middleground. Given that the justices preserved the Black-majority district and reaffirmed section two of the VRA in the 2023 Allen v. Milligan case in Alabama, he said he expects the Supreme Court to do the same here. The court’s order would be that the states would have to redraw the districts in a different way, he predicted.
The current administration and government’s flouting of incremental change for sweeping upheaval, however, makes the Supreme Court’s possible decision far more uncertain, he said. That uncertainty increases with what he described as Chief Justice John Roberts’ inconsistency on his commitment to only call balls and strikes as a justice. Roberts has been aggressive in cutting back voting rights and “pre-existing understandings of how the law works.”
“I think the real test is whether or not John Roberts is as good as his word,” Crayton said.
“If this is their opportunity to surprise us and say, ‘Oh yeah, no more Voting Rights Act,’ it’s an opportunity for them to say it. But it will come at cost,” he added. “That’s what’s at stake here, whether or not this is a new era where we don’t see the federal government as a valid force of advancing the right to vote.”
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