{"id":134,"date":"2026-06-03T14:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=134"},"modified":"2026-06-03T14:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:19:11","slug":"when-and-why-did-complying-with-the-voting-rights-act-become-unconstitutional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=134","title":{"rendered":"When and why did complying with the Voting Rights Act become unconstitutional?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><em>Please note that SCOTUS Outside Opinions constitute the views of outside contributors and do not reflect the official opinions of SCOTUSblog.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=132\">The two Roberts courts<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In part 1 of this post, we explained how <em>Callais v. Louisiana<\/em> extinguished vote-dilution claims under the Voting Rights Act without admitting to doing so. But many are still asking whether the case adopted a new rule for when an electoral map violates the Fourteenth Amendment as a racial gerrymander. Once again, Justice Samuel Alito\u2019s majority decision neither owns nor openly justifies its bottom-line ruling on this issue. Did <em>Callais<\/em> retain the old rule under which an electoral map is a racial gerrymander \u201conly if race \u2018predominated\u2019 in the state\u2019s decisionmaking process\u201d? Or did <em>Callais<\/em> hold that a map is a racial gerrymander if its adoption by the legislature involved <em>any<\/em> \u201cintentional use of race\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>Certainly, opponents of the VRA will want to claim that the opinion did the latter. But we argue here that they have a high burden to explain why such a rule is demanded by the Constitution.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Before explaining why, it helps to briefly distinguish two different grounds that existed to challenge the design of electoral districts: one statutory, the other constitutional. Statutory challenges \u2013 authorized under Section 2 of the VRA \u2013 were known as vote-dilution claims, which (prior to <em>Callais<\/em>) applied a so-called \u201ceffects\u201d or \u201cresults\u201d test. Under this test, an electoral map violated the VRA\u2019s ban on vote dilution if it <em>resulted<\/em> in minority voters having less opportunity than other voters to choose their preferred representatives. Meanwhile, \u201cracial gerrymandering\u201d claims challenge district design under the Fourteenth Amendment. These claims apply the equal protection clause\u2019s prohibition on racial discrimination to the drawing of electoral districts \u2013 and they purport to turn on a <em>mental state<\/em> test. That is, an electoral map violates the equal protection clause only if the state legislators were in some prohibited mental state when they adopted the map.<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court has long articulated a mental state view of the Fourteenth Amendment, holding that the equal protection clause proscribes only actions taken with a discriminatory racial \u201cpurpose\u201d or \u201cintent.\u201d But the court has not consistently explained\u00a0<em>what<\/em>, exactly, the decisionmaker must intend (and <em>which<\/em> decisionmaker) such that they are engaging in unconstitutional \u201cintentional\u201d discrimination. Such questions are the bread and butter of substantive criminal law. The definition of a crime requires articulating both a mental state (e.g., intentional versus reckless) and the element <em>to which<\/em> the mental state applies (e.g., an assault crime could be defined as intentionally causing serious bodily harm with a deadly weapon, where the defendant only must be reckless, as opposed to intentional, with respect to the weapon being deadly). <\/p>\n<p>The mental state rule defining \u201cintentional\u00a0racial discrimination\u201d is especially muddled in the Supreme Court\u2019s racial-gerrymandering jurisprudence. In that context, the court held that intentional discrimination occurs \u201conly if race \u2018predominated\u2019 in the State\u2019 decisionmaking process.\u201d But no case has clearly explained what it takes in terms of human minds and decision-making for race to \u201cpredominate\u201d over other districting goals.<\/p>\n<p>To meet this practical challenge, the court operationalized the rule against \u201cracial predominance\u201d by asking whether a map matched observable patterns, which we\u2019ll call the Pattern Rule. That rule asks: Did the creation of majority-minority districts satisfy \u2013 or at least not unduly compromise \u2013 \u201ctraditional districting criteria\u201d? (These criteria include whether district lines have a somewhat normal shape, no disconnected parts, and preserves political subdivisions.) If so, the court could say the map was not a racial gerrymander.<\/p>\n<p>Notably, this test accommodated the VRA. Maps drawn to comply with Section 2 \u2013 those drawn to incorporate an additional majority-minority district to prevent vote dilution \u2013 could satisfy the Pattern Rule, even though racial composition was among the factors considered by the mapmaker. And indeed, that was the reasoning that won the day just three years ago in <em>Allen v. Milligan<\/em>. In <em>Milligan,<\/em> the court affirmed that Alabama\u2019s initial redistricting plan diluted Black votes under Section 2 and that the remedial, VRA-compliant maps proposed by the plaintiffs would not violate the equal protection clause. In particular, the majority reasoned that the proposed remedial map did not constitute a racial gerrymander <em>because<\/em> the two proposed majority-minority districts were drawn in a way that \u201ccomported with traditional districting criteria.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But here is the rub. As we explain in our forthcoming article, co-authored with Charlotte Lawrence, the current court has been moving towards a rule for equal protection liability in various domains \u2013 from education to voting rights \u2013 that we call (borrowing from Glenn Loury) <em>Race-Indifference<\/em>. Race-Indifference holds that decisionmakers violate the equal protection clause whenever they (i) intend any ends that are not \u201crace-neutral\u201d or (ii) act with the purpose of affecting racial composition.<\/p>\n<p>If <em>Callais<\/em> adopted that rule (and that is a big if), it has radical implications: any districting choice made for the purpose of conforming with the Voting Rights Act (as it was interpreted before <em>Callais<\/em>) <em>or<\/em> providing some minimal quantity of minority voting power is unconstitutional. The Pattern Rule \u2013 the court\u2019s longstanding approach to \u201cracial predominance\u201d \u2013 would be defunct.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=131\">Court clears the way for Alabama to use its preferred congressional map<\/a><\/p>\n<p>To be clear, it is far from obvious whether <em>Callais<\/em> adopted Race-Indifference. As law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos has noted, <em>Callais<\/em> dutifully restates the Pattern Rule that <em>Milligan<\/em> applied. But in finding that Louisiana\u2019s map violated the equal protection clause, <em>Callais<\/em> noted only that the state\u2019s \u201cunderlying goal was racial,\u201d because it sought to \u201cachieve a black voting-age population over 50%\u201d in the district at issue. Alito did not discuss whether this map otherwise \u201csubordinated\u201d traditional districting criteria; he stressed Louisiana\u2019s \u201cexpress\u201d intent to avoid VRA liability by creating an additional minority opportunity district. If <em>that intent<\/em> were the basis for the court\u2019s holding that Louisiana\u2019s map triggered and failed strict scrutiny, it would appear that the court is adopting Race-Indifference, not the Pattern Rule, as the standard for racial gerrymandering claims.<\/p>\n<p>The implications of Race-Indifference would be stunning. Set aside Justice Clarence Thomas\u2019 (well founded!) complaints about the difficulty of ascertaining the intent of hundreds of legislators when they adopt a map. This rule transforms the Fourteenth Amendment into a sword <em>against<\/em> VRA-compliant maps. If those maps were created with an avowed goal \u2013 to comply with a statute requiring racial equality in political opportunity \u2013 they are all open to attack via Race-Indifference.<\/p>\n<p>That would be an especially perverse outcome given the Supreme Court\u2019s holding in a racial gerrymandering case from 2023, <em>Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP<\/em>. There, the court declared that districting for partisan control is, by assumption, a race-neutral end. Relying in part on a 2019 case (<em>Rucho v. Common Cause<\/em>) holding that partisan-gerrymandering claims are non-justiciable, the court reasoned that a legislature\u2019s partisan districting goals should be treated on par with traditional districting criteria, such as compactness. As Alito put it, writing for the majority, \u201cIf either politics or race could explain a district\u2019s contours, the plaintiff has not cleared its bar.\u201d As a result, if a state legislature asserts that it has gerrymandered a map for a partisan advantage, that effectively operates as a complete defense against charges of racial intent.<\/p>\n<p><em>Alexander<\/em> thus answers the foundational question in an equal protection claim \u2013 was the government motivated by a racially \u201cdiscriminatory purpose\u201d? \u2013 with a practically irrebuttable presumption that partisan intent precludes a racial purpose. But it is obviously possible that a state can intend to concentrate Democrat voters for the purpose of diluting Black votes, just as it is possible to intend to fire all people who refuse to work on Sundays for the purpose of diluting Catholics in a workforce. Alito would launder such intentions by assuming: Whenever states declare they intend partisan gerrymandering, race does not predominate, or alternatively, that intent is assumed to be race-neutral. But if partisan-gerrymandering claims can be repackaged as racial-gerrymandering claims, then racial-gerrymandering can be hidden inside a partisan-gerrymandering package.<\/p>\n<p>The upshot is that, with <em>Alexander<\/em> and <em>Callais<\/em>, Alito has set up a game of \u201cHeads, I win. Tails, you lose.\u201d As we explained in part 1, it is now impossible to use the VRA to challenge maps that have the effect of diluting minority votes. And, under <em>Alexander<\/em>, it is also effectively impossible to challenge such maps as racial gerrymanders absent an \u201cexpress\u201d statement that the goal was racial. Yet, if the court demands Race-Indifference in districting, then litigants are free to use racial-gerrymandering claims to force states to <strong><em>undo<\/em><\/strong> maps passed to <strong><em>comply<\/em><\/strong> with the VRA \u2013 maps <em>granting<\/em> a minimal quantum of minority voting power.<\/p>\n<p>Worse still, the majority offers no principled reasoning for this position, whether originalist or otherwise. The Voting Rights Act was one of the greatest legislative achievements of a bloody Civil Rights movement against racial caste. If this statute is itself unconstitutional <em>because of<\/em> two of the greatest constitutional achievements of a bloody Civil War against racial slavery (the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments) <em>when<\/em> did it become unconstitutional? If Race-Indifference governs, when did a mental state of complying with the VRA, as it was interpreted for 40 years, become illegal?<\/p>\n<p>The court\u2019s own VRA precedents demand answers to these questions. The <em>Callais<\/em> majority said that prior cases \u201cleft open whether \u2018race-based redistricting\u2019 under \u00a7 2, even if permissible when the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1982, could \u2018extend indefinitely into the future\u2019 despite significant changes in relevant conditions.\u201d This is a surprising statement from self-proclaimed originalists who believe that what the Constitution prohibits or allows is fixed at enactment and cannot shift with changing social circumstances. But even setting that aside, the justices are silent on what \u201crelevant conditions\u201d in society explain the VRA\u2019s transformation from constitutional to unconstitutional. Why, if race is <em>currently<\/em> irrelevant to partisan politics and vice versa, has racially polarized voting persisted if not exacerbated over the past 40 years?<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, there is a deep tension in this court\u2019s racial equal protection jurisprudence: On the one hand, the court applies strict scrutiny to eviscerate the VRA based on the premise that race is a social classification meriting heightened sensitivity in our society. This is only justified if race is <em>today<\/em> a salient vector of social and political difference, significant enough to apply the highest level of scrutiny. On the other hand, the court reasons that because of \u201cprogress\u201d and \u201ccurrent political conditions,\u201d there is no need for a statute that guarantees a minimal measure of racial political opportunity. But if that is true, there is no need for the court to interpose its judgment about when Congress or states can or can\u2019t act for racial reasons because, <em>by the court\u2019s own reasoning<\/em>, race is no longer any more sensitive or deserving of special scrutiny than partisanship.<\/p>\n<p>The court cannot have it both ways. Either today\u2019s \u201cprogress\u201d means that these questions \u2013 from affirmative action to race-conscious redistricting \u2013 returns to the political process, or the very reasons that race is still subject to strict scrutiny demands that statutes like the VRA be given their full sweep.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=128\">Supreme Court permits Alabama to use congressional map struck by lower court as racially discriminatory<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Please note that SCOTUS Outside Opinions constitute the views of outside contributors and do not reflect the official opinions of SCOTUSblog. Read more The two Roberts courts In part 1 of this post, we explained how Callais v. Louisiana extinguished vote-dilution claims under the Voting Rights Act without admitting to doing so. But many are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":133,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-scotus-outside-opinions"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>When and why did complying with the Voting Rights Act become unconstitutional? - American Service Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=134\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When and why did complying with the Voting Rights Act become unconstitutional? - American Service Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Please note that SCOTUS Outside Opinions constitute the views of outside contributors and do not reflect the official opinions of SCOTUSblog. 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