Stakes are high for voting rights as Supreme Court again tackles Louisiana redistricting dispute

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NBC News

Oct. 12, 2025, 5:00 AM EDT


WASHINGTON — The way Louisiana’s Republican leaders put it, the pervasive racial discrimination in elections that led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is all in the past. That is why they are now urging the Supreme Court, in a case being argued on Wednesday, to bar states from using any consideration of race when drawing legislative districts, gutting a key plank of the law that was designed to ensure Black voters would have a chance of electing their preferred candidates.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told NBC News that the Voting Rights Act was designed to address blatantly discriminatory policies and practices that prevented Black people and other minorities from voting decades ago. “I think the question now is, have we gotten to a point where those obstacles really don’t exist anymore?” she said. “I don’t think they exist in Louisiana,” she added.

At issue is a congressional district map that Louisiana grudgingly redrew last year after being sued under the Voting Rights Act to ensure that there were two majority-Black districts. The original map only had one in a state where a third of the population is Black, according to the U.S. census.

The state’s new legal argument, which may appeal to a conservative-majority Supreme Court, is that drawing a map to ensure majority-Black districts violates the Constitution’s 14th and 15th Amendments, which were both enacted after the Civil War to ensure former slaves had equal rights under the law, including the right to vote.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-louisiana-redistricting-case-rcna236484

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1. SCROTUS is going to "Tackle" it

Kinda dumb to use a sports analogy for a fascist court who doesn't give a crap about democracy.

[24601]

3. Professional sports seem to be a good analogy. An oligarchy of Billionaires "own" millionaires who are drafted,

bought and sold. Owners bring in coaches (overseers) to impose their will on the players. The owners make the rules of the game, and players have no votes. Players can either submit or quit, forfeiting their careers. Owners coerce communities to build sports palaces with tax money.

[maxrandb]

2. Can we stop fucking pretending their is any fucking drama in how this Court of the Confederacy is going to rule?

Please, can we STOP???!

This racist decision was written the second Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court justice from President Obama.

Fuck! This decision was written the day the Federalist Society was created.

There is no fucking drama here!

There is no fucking "breaking news" here!

There is no fucking "anticipation" here!

The only "drama" will be in how the American people respond to decisions we know are already made.

This is like Donnie Dipshit buying the Miss Teen USA Pageant, and wondering whether or not he will walk into the dressing room while the contestants are changing into bikinis.

"Duhhh"

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. Deadline Legal Blog-The Voting Rights Act is at further risk as the Roberts Court hears Louisiana map appeal

The court will hear oral argument Wednesday in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that could further gut the landmark law that the court has already weakened.

MSNBC: The Voting Rights Act is at further risk as the Roberts Court hears Louisiana map appeal: The court will hear oral argument Wednesday in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that could further gut the landmark law that the court has already weakened. www.msnbc.com/deadline-whi...

— (@jwwcan.bsky.social) 2025-10-15T14:10:59.334Z

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/supreme-court-voting-rights-act-supreme-louisiana-map-redistricting-rcna237637

While we rightly pay attention to how the Supreme Court is empowering President Donald Trump and his administration, the justices will hold a hearing Wednesday that highlights the Roberts Court’s priorities that predate Trump and will echo long after he leaves office.

Those priorities surface in the appeal, called Callais, with the question lurking in the background of whether the Constitution is “colorblind.” Though it isn’t the direct legal question in the case, it’s a notion that Chief Justice John Roberts and his Republican-appointed colleagues have embraced, notably in the Harvard case that gutted affirmative action in 2023. The Callais appeal raises the prospect of the court cutting out the remaining pillar of the landmark Voting Rights Act on similar grounds. The result could shape future U.S. elections and further help Republicans’ electoral prospects......

Colorblindness
Following the Roberts-led court’s hollowing out of another part of the Voting Rights Act in the 2013 Shelby County case, the remaining safeguard implicated by Callais is Section 2, which prohibits racially discriminatory voting practices or procedures.

The parties present opposing views on whether taking race into account when drawing districts can be necessary to realize the law’s promise or is necessarily anathema to the Constitution in 2025.

“Section 2 authorizes race-conscious remedies only where, when, and to the extent required to respond to a ‘regrettable reality’ of ongoing unequal electoral opportunity based on race,” lawyers representing Black voters wrote to the justices ahead of the hearing. Removing that section’s protections in Louisiana “will not end discrimination there or lead to a race-blind society, but it may well lead to a severe decrease in minority representation at all levels of government in many parts of the country,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, lawyers for Louisiana countered that the “invidious classifications underlying race-based redistricting present the last significant battle in defense of our ‘color blind’ Constitution.” They called the battle an “easy” one, citing the court’s statement in the Harvard affirmative action case that eliminating racial discrimination “means eliminating all of it.” The state said that means “no quarter for race-based redistricting.”

I am nervous. I remember Roberts gutting the Voting Rights Act in his Shelby County opinion where Roberts claimed that all racial discrimination had ended and so the Voting Rights Act was no longer needed.

[bluestarone]

5. Pretty sure they will decide, then

NO COMMENTS!!! (Maybe our honest judges will speak out?)