SCOTUS Decision Striking Down Racial Gerrymandering Shows Alito Plays The Long Game
Brianna Lyman
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito doesn’t always write a majority opinion that gives conservatives exactly what they want when they want. Sometimes, he writes decisions that get the needed five votes to make a majority — and move the needle in the long term.
He did it again this week in Louisiana v. Callais.
The case arose after Louisiana created a second majority-black congressional district after a lower court said that the state’s original congressional map (which had one majority-black district) likely violated Section 2. The high court ultimately ruled that Section 2 is designed to enforce the Constitution’s prohibition on intentional racial discrimination but that “Unfortunately, lower courts have sometimes applied this Court’s §2 precedents in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids.”
In other words, the decision doesn’t blow up Section 2 of the VRA, as some on the left hypothesized or feared it would. It also doesn’t do what Clarence Thomas — who wrote a concurring opinion that said he “would go further and hold that §2 of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate districting at all” — wanted it to do.
Instead, it’s actually “*better* than getting rid of section 2 outright, because it means section 2 can be used to CHALLENGE majority-minority districts (for impermissibly using race),” as Article 3 Project’s Senior Counsel Will Chamberlain said on X.
more
https://thefederalist.com/2026/05/01/scotus-decision-striking-down-racial-gerrymandering-shows-alito-plays-the-long-game/
