Closing Summary
Here’s a roundup of reactions on Thursday to the supreme court’s decision requiring Louisiana to redraw its congressional maps – a ruling that deals a significant blow to voting rights nationwide:
Louisiana’s secretary of state has announced the suspension of the House primaries ahead of the May 16 primaries. In a statement on Thursday following the supreme court’s ruling that the state must redraw its congressional maps, Nancy Landry said: “While the US House races will remain on voters’ ballots, any votes cast in those races will not be counted.”
Donald Trump lashed out at Louisiana Republican senator Bill Cassidy after the congressman told CNN earlier that he doesn’t think it’s a “very good idea” for the state to postpone its May primaries after the supreme court decision. “Hopefully all of the Great Republican People of Louisiana, which I won, BIG, three times, will be voting Bill Cassidy OUT OF OFFICE in the upcoming Republican Primary!” the president wrote.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, is reportedly targeting at least four key states for redistricting maneuvers ahead of the 2028 elections to counter the anticipated Republican gerrymanders. “All options are on the table as we get through the 2026 election and look to the future,” Jeffries told Politico on Thursday. “As many governors have already indicated, we will be prepared to respond in states like New York, Illinois and Maryland, as well as in Colorado, in advance of the 2028 election.”
The voting rights advocates who fought for majority-minority districts across the US south are organizing their next steps after the supreme court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act on Wednesday and eviscerated much of the work of the civil rights era. “I think that it is deeply troubling that in 2026 that many of us have less rights than our grandparents had – and that becomes truer and truer every year,” said Ashley K Shelton, CEO and president of Power Coalition for Equality and Justice, a Louisiana-based civic engagement organization and a plaintiff in the Callais case.
Reverend Al Sharpton appeared this morning on MS Now’s Morning Joe program to discuss yesterday’s court ruling, describing the decision as a “devastating blow.” “It takes the last part of dealing with racial inequality and gerrymandering off the table,” he said.
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law decried the decision by the supreme court to severely weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Damon T Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee, issued this statement: “Black Americans have never been fully represented in the electoral process. This ruling makes it less likely that we ever will. The impact of this ruling cannot be understated. The consequences will be seen both immediately and far into the future.”
House speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday urged states to redraw their maps following the Supreme Court’s monumental decision striking down the Voting Rights Act. Louisiana – where Republicans could reconfigure two district currently represented by Black Democrats – has already indicated it wants to quickly redraw ahead of the midterms.
Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold has pushed for redistricting in her state since last year, when Republicans began middecade redistricting efforts across the country.
“We cannot stand by while MAGA and Trump tries to degrade democracy and grab control in an undemocratic way, of Congress,” she told the Guardian.
Colorado has had independent redistricting since 2018. The state draws its maps through an independent commission, which keeps the Congressional delegation at an even 4-4 split. Any changes must go through voters. Though Griswold still supports independent redistricting, she said that Coloradans could cast votes to split the map 7-1 in favor of Democrats.
“To protect our democracy and the Colorado way of life, we have to fight back. First and foremost, that means defending our democracy in ‘26. When it comes to redistricting, this is a break glass in case of an emergency scenario,” she said.
“Blue states should absolutely be fighting back. I support Colorado moving forward and voters weighing in this year to help secure our democracy. I support a narrow, limited use only in the very specific circumstances of mid-year partisan gerrymandering, like we’re seeing in states like Texas and North Carolina, where Republicans are trying to grab onto power. Every state should take the actions that we can to fight back,” she added.
The ruling from the US supreme court destroying one of the last pillars of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) marks the end of a long and painstaking campaign to roll back civil rights legislation by two titans of the court’s rightwing majority, Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
Acting as an unspoken double act, the duo have chipped away at what has been called the crown jewel of the civil rights movement. Wednesday’s ruling in Louisiana v Callais is the fifth major supreme court decision authored by the two justices that have slowly but surely strangled efforts to protect the democratic rights of Black and other minority Americans.
The attack on section 2 of the VRA in this latest ruling eviscerates a critical tool that had been used for 40 years to prevent the political power of minority voters being diluted by largely Republican southern states in the drafting of electoral maps. The ruling finds that attempts to create a second electoral district in Louisiana that would give African American voters the chance to choose their own representatives proportionate to the state’s population, which is about one-third Black, was a form of “unconstitutional racial gerrymandering”.
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Louisiana's secretary of state announces suspension of House primaries
Louisiana’s secretary of state has announced the suspension of the House primaries ahead of the May 16 primaries.
In a statement on Thursday following the supreme court’s ruling that the state must redraw its congressional maps, Nancy Landry said:
“While the US House races will remain on voters’ ballots, any votes cast in those races will not be counted.”
Landry added:
“Pursuant to 18:401.1(B), I have certified the emergency in light of the Supreme Court ruling. This is a mandatory step prior to the Governor issuing an executive order suspending the upcoming Louisiana US. House races. All other races on the ballot, besides the US House races, will continue as scheduled, with early voting beginning on Saturday.”
Following the report detailing Hakeem Jeffries’ intent to counter Republican gerrymanders, Trump took back to Truth Social to lash out against the House minority leader.
“Hakeem Jeffries just called the Supreme Court of the United States an illegitimate Court! This is a Low IQ individual, who should not be allowed to talk that way about one of the Greatest Institutions anywhere in the World,” Trump wrote. “He should withdraw the statement, IMMEDIATELY!”
Trump himself had previously berated the supreme court back in March after the court ruled many of the tariffs he imposed last year were illegal. In another social media post, he described that court as “completely inept and embarrassing” and accused them of “hurting the country”.
At a March Republican fundraising dinner, the president said that “Two of the people that voted for that, I appointed [Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett], and they sicken me. They sicken me because they are bad for our country.”
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, is reportedly targeting at least four key states for redistricting maneuvers ahead of the 2028 elections to counter the anticipated Republican gerrymanders.
“All options are on the table as we get through the 2026 election and look to the future,” Jeffries told Politico on Thursday. “As many governors have already indicated, we will be prepared to respond in states like New York, Illinois and Maryland, as well as in Colorado, in advance of the 2028 election.”
Voting rights advocates vow to ‘relocate’ fight after supreme court gutting
The voting rights advocates who fought for majority-minority districts across the US south are organizing their next steps after the supreme court effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act on Wednesday and eviscerated much of the work of the civil rights era.
“I think that it is deeply troubling that in 2026 that many of us have less rights than our grandparents had – and that becomes truer and truer every year,” said Ashley K Shelton, CEO and president of Power Coalition for Equality and Justice, a Louisiana-based civic engagement organization and a plaintiff in the Callais case.
Shortly after the supreme court decision, Shelton said that it was “deeply disappointing”.
In the decades since the VRA’s passage, section 2 has allowed plaintiffs to challenge electoral maps that suggest they were drawn in an effectively racially discriminatory way.
Voting rights advocates, many of whom have worked for decades to empower voters in their states and regions, say the fight isn’t over just because of the decision.
Read more:
More Democratic senators are continuing to express disappointment with yesterday’s ruling.
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois wrote on social media that “the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has again turned its back on the promise of an equal right to vote, further eroding the landmark Voting Rights Act”.
“As Justice Kagan wrote for the dissent, the Voting Rights Act was ‘born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers’. I agree that this decision is a disappointing exercise ‘in politics and partisanship,” he added.
Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey wrote: “When Black representation was eviscerated in our past, we needed a movement to restore fairness. Since the Voting Rights Act, Black Americans have begun to have a voice in Congress.”
“I am standing here as a result of that movement – just the fourth Black American elected to the Senate in US history,” he continued. “Now we are in a moral moment again, and we need a movement again in this election to ensure every Americans’ voice is heard”.
Updated
Trump encourages Louisiana to vote Bill Cassidy out of office
Also on Truth Social today, Trump lashed out at Louisiana Republican senator Bill Cassidy after the congressman told CNN earlier that he doesn’t think it’s a “very good idea” for the state to postpone its May primaries after the supreme court decision.
“Hopefully all of the Great Republican People of Louisiana, which I won, BIG, three times, will be voting Bill Cassidy OUT OF OFFICE in the upcoming Republican Primary!” the president wrote. In an earlier post, he described Cassidy as a “very disloyal person whose ‘TRUMP’ Endorsement got him elected”.
Trump says Tennessee governor promised to 'correct' state electoral map to 'give us one extra seat'
Donald Trump said on Truth Social today that he spoke with Bill Lee, governor of Tennessee, who told the president that he is working to “correct” the state’s congressional maps following yesterday’s ruling.
“I had a very good conversation with Governor Bill Lee, of Tennessee, this morning, wherein he stated that he would work hard to correct the unconstitutional flaw in the Congressional Maps of the Great State of Tennessee,” Trump wrote. “Likewise, all of the other Political Representatives of Tennessee have promised to do so”.
He added: “This should give us one extra seat, and help Save our Country from the Radical Left Democrats, and their Country destroying Policies of High Tax, Open Borders, Transgender Mutilization, Defunding the Police, ICE, and Border Patrol, No Voter ID, Soft on Crime, and so much more. Thank you Governor Lee — PUSH HARD!”
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Al Sharpton says 'devastating' decision can spur 'movement of people'
Reverend Al Sharpton appeared this morning on MS Now’s Morning Joe program to discuss yesterday’s court ruling, describing the decision as a “devastating blow”.
“It takes the last part of dealing with racial inequality and gerrymandering off the table,” he said. “Look at Mississippi, for example, 37.7% of Mississippi is Black, but only [hold] one congressional seat. That didn’t just happen. And when we look at the fact that during Reconstruction, we went up to eight Blacks in Congress, but when Reconstruction ended, it wasn’t until 1969 before we got eight Blacks in Congress. So, there was a deliberate racial scheme. Now we’re acting like that is all over with when it is not.”
But despite the setback, Sharpton believes the decision may inspire a bigger movement for racial equality and encourage more voters to take to the polls.
“The question now is, can we deal with it? The answer is yes,” he said. “Many of the Blacks that are in Congress are in swing districts. Many whites will vote for Blacks now that wouldn’t in years passed, and many Blacks will be energized by this decision.
“So, I think it’s a devastating decision, but I think it will, in many ways, inspire a movement of people, Black and White, to say, ‘we’re not going to live in an America that’s going backwards, despite a backwards supreme court decision”.
Updated
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law decried the decision by the supreme court to severely weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Damon T Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee, issued this statement:
“Black Americans have never been fully represented in the electoral process. This ruling makes it less likely that we ever will. The impact of this ruling cannot be understated. The consequences will be seen both immediately and far into the future.
“The Court claims to leave the law intact, but reinterprets it in a convoluted way, making it infinitely more difficult—if not impossible—not only to secure meaningful relief for a violation of voting rights, but to prove that a violation exists at all.
“Partisanship has now been elevated from permissible, to being a priority, to now offering protection to states, insulating them from accountability for violating voting rights. And communities of color are left with rights on paper, but virtually no effective remedies in fact.
“Faced with this new reality, we must not give up hope. We must use every tool at our disposal to protect voting rights, from litigation and advocacy to the Election Protection Coalition… We must also pursue reform of the Supreme Court, which has become both logically and morally bankrupt. Our democracy depends on it.”
Analysis: Republicans could crack urban areas to dilute Black vote
The Voting Rights Act was a political peace compact written in John Lewis’s blood.
The Callais v Landry decision by the US supreme court, which set aside much of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, whitewashed that blood from history, along with that of thousands of other Americans who fought segregationist white supremacists at lunch counters and bus stations and courthouses for political equality.
“This ruling is a major setback for our nation and threatens to erode the hard-won victories we’ve fought, bled, and died for,” the NAACP wrote in a statement following the decision.
The passage of the Voting Rights Act has created a Congress that better reflects the ethnic and racial diversity of the country. But it also established a racial taxonomy in politics that associates non-white voters with Democrats.
With the Callais decision, which ruled that litigants must prove racial motivations in redistricting, Republican majorities will be able to marginalize Black political power across the US and especially in the south, where voting is highly racially polarized.
Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, told CNN he doesn’t think it’s a “very good idea” for the state to postpone its May primaries after the supreme court decision. But, reporter Manu Raju wrote on X, he also said he hasn’t fully thought that through yet.
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Supreme court decision more likely to affect local-level government
There’s rightfully going to be a lot of attention on what the supreme court’s Callais decision means at the congressional level.
But the impact of the law is likely to be far more widespread at the local level.
As this helpful graphic from the Brennan Center points out, since 2015, the vast majority of cases in which a court has found a Section 2 violation have been at the local level.
The election suspension was denounced by some Democrats, the Associated Press reported.
“This is going to cause mass confusion among voters – Democrats, Republicans, white, Black, everybody,” said Louisiana state senator Royce Duplessis, a Democrat who represents the New Orleans area. “What they’re effectively doing is changing the rules of the game in the middle of the game. It’s rigging the system.”
Currently, Louisiana is represented in the US House by four Republicans and two Democrats. But, a redrawn map could give Republicans a chance to pick up at least one more seat in the November midterm elections.
Louisiana wants to redraw maps before the midterms. What about other southern states?
House speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday urged states to redraw their maps following the Supreme Court’s monumental decision striking down the Voting Rights Act.
Louisiana – where Republicans could reconfigure two district currently represented by Black Democrats – has already indicated it wants to quickly redraw ahead of the midterms.
The landscape elsewhere is a bit more complicated. Alabama is currently under a court-ordered injunction to use its current maps – which has two districts represented by Black Democrats – until 2030. A court put that injunction in place after finding Alabama intentionally discriminated against Black voters. I would expect Alabama to quickly ask the court to release it from that injunction in light of the Callais decision.
Mississippi could also move quickly to get rid of a district represented by Bennie Thompson, a Black Democrat. And Republicans in South Carolina could also quickly move to get rid of the district of Jim Clyburn, one of the most powerful Democrats in the US House.
In Tennessee, Republicans could redraw the map to get rid of a district around Memphis, currently represented by Democrat Steve Cohen. Republicans in Georgia may also try and wipe out several districts held by Democrats.
How Louisiana got here: US supreme court decision severely weakens Voting Rights Act
On Wednesday, the US supreme court ruled that Louisiana will have to redraw its congressional map, in a landmark decision that effectively guts a major section of the Voting Rights Act.
In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the court rendered ineffective section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting.
“Allowing race to play any part in government decision-making represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in almost every other context,” Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, wrote for the majority opinion. “Compliance with section 2 thus could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting here. The state’s attempt to satisfy the middle district’s ruling, although understandable, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
The court’s decision is a major upheaval in US civil rights law and gives lawmakers permission to draw districting plans that weaken the influence of Black and other minority voters.
Here’s more of that statement from Louisiana attorney general Liz Murrill and Republican governor Jeff Landry:
Yesterday’s historic Supreme Court victory for Louisiana has an immediate consequence for the State. The Supreme Court previously stayed an injunction against the State’s enforcement of the current Congressional map. By the Court’s order, however, that stay automatically terminated with yesterday’s decision. Accordingly, the State is currently enjoined from carrying out congressional elections under the current map. We are working together with the Legislature and the Secretary of State’s office to develop a path forward.
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Louisiana postpones May primaries after supreme court rules state must redraw congressional maps
Louisiana moved to postpone its May primaries on Thursday in a move that came as other southern states are also scrambling to redraw congressional districts in response to the supreme court’s Wednesday ruling that severely weakened the landmark Voting Rights Act.
Before the supreme court’s decision, eliminating a key protection against racial discrimination in drawing voting maps, some states had already begun initiating processes to redraw districts and gut Black voting power. More states have now followed, with governors calling for special sessions to redraw congressional districts, potentially before the midterm elections in November.
Louisiana governor Jeff Landry and attorney general Liz Murrill, both Republicans, said in a joint statement that the state can no longer use its current districts to carry out the primaries after the supreme court ruling. Early voting had been scheduled to begin Saturday in advance of the 16 May primary.
“The State is currently enjoined from carrying out congressional elections under the current map,” Landry and Murrill said in the statement on social media Thursday. “We are working together with the Legislature and the Secretary of State’s office to develop a path forward.”
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