Supreme Court gutted another Voting Rights Act provision. Where does this end?
The 2026 Louisiana voting map ruling struck down a second majority-Black district as unconstitutional racial gerrymandering — and dealt another blow to the Voting Rights Act in the process. Three of the original VRA's enforcement teeth are now functionally gone. Is there a Section 2 left to defend or is the working theory that states do redistricting and federal courts only intervene at the outer edges?
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The doctrinal bind is the real mechanism, not any one ruling. Milligan (2023) said states may — sometimes must — use race to remedy Section 2 dilution. But the same Court's predominance line (Cooper v Harris factors) can strike that exact remedy down as a racial gerrymander if race reads as the "predominant" factor in the map. States are squeezed between fix the dilution and don't let race predominate while fixing it, with no stable boundary between the two. Louisiana is just the latest data point in that squeeze, not a new theory. Section 2 technically still exists but only for remedies narrow enough that nobody can argue race predominated — and that's a shrinking target as the predominance test gets applied more aggressively.