Callais restores the VRA to its original purpose.
My emphasis.
The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Louisiana v. Callais may dramatically alter congressional districts in Southern states. Writing for a 6-3 majority, Justice Samuel Alito unraveled decades of confusing and misguided caselaw construing the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) to hold that states may not engage in racial gerrymandering—or be forced to do so by federal courts—when drawing congressional districts. The Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause forbids race-based discrimination, Alito pointedly declared, preventing Section 2 of the VRA from being interpreted to require the creation of “majority-black” districts to comply with the VRA.
Congress enacted the VRA in 1965 (pursuant to Section 2 of the 15th Amendment) to prohibit states from disenfranchising blacks through obstacles such as poll taxes, literacy tests, property qualifications, white primaries, and grandfather clauses—not to create electoral parity, a long-standing position of Justice Clarence Thomas’s that he repeated in his concurring opinion in Callais. As Justice Alito wrote for the majority, the “Voting Rights Act does not guarantee equal outcomes.”
Contrary to the claims of partisan critics, the decision in Louisiana v. Callais does not “gut” or “hollow out” the VRA. Nor, contrary to Justice Elena Kagan’s hysterical dissent, does the majority in Callais “eviscerate” the VRA or render Section 2 “all but a dead letter.” Justice Alito’s meticulous majority opinion merely prevents the VRA from being abused to dictate “proportional representation”—that is, racial quotas—contrary to the express language of Section 2, which states that “nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.”
Congress enacted the VRA in 1965 (pursuant to Section 2 of the 15th Amendment) to prohibit states from disenfranchising blacks through obstacles such as poll taxes, literacy tests, property qualifications, white primaries, and grandfather clauses—not to create electoral parity, a long-standing position of Justice Clarence Thomas’s that he repeated in his concurring opinion in Callais. As Justice Alito wrote for the majority, the “Voting Rights Act does not guarantee equal outcomes.”
Contrary to the claims of partisan critics, the decision in Louisiana v. Callais does not “gut” or “hollow out” the VRA. Nor, contrary to Justice Elena Kagan’s hysterical dissent, does the majority in Callais “eviscerate” the VRA or render Section 2 “all but a dead letter.” Justice Alito’s meticulous majority opinion merely prevents the VRA from being abused to dictate “proportional representation”—that is, racial quotas—contrary to the express language of Section 2, which states that “nothing in this section establishes a right to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion in the population.”
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