A few initial reflections.
Following extensive anticipation, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. (The Chief Justice described the decision as a “waylay.”) Here are a few preliminary observations.
First, more than five months passed between the October oral argument and the decision date. The longer the case lingered, the tougher it would be for Republican legislatures to redraw district boundaries. There was chatter that the dissenters were stringing out the case to run out the clock. Are those insinuations warranted? Justice Alito’s majority opinion stands out for how little it interacts with the dissent. Only a small number of lines near the opinion’s second-to-last page address the dissent. This isn’t the sort of drafting process that required many opinions to bounce back-and-forth for revisions. Moreover, there were no concurrences. The majority opinion carried six clean votes. Indeed, I would guess Justice Alito circulated this draft soon after the conference. And I can’t imagine there was much disagreement among Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson. Is five months an unusually long horizon for a 90-page decision when the majority does not respond to the dissent? Not typically, but when one side has a strong incentive to hurry, the other side may not be in a rush. (I’ll set aside the claim in Molly Hemingway’s latest book that the dissenters in Dobbs refused to expedite the release of the opinion after the leak.) Let’s wait and see what future leaks reveal.
Second, I’m reminded of Allen v. Milligan, decided just a few weeks before SFFA. At the time, there was speculation that Chief Justice Roberts and mostly Justice Kavanaugh voted against Alabama to soften the blow of largely ending affirmative action. Barely three years later, the Court leans on SFFA to arguably scale back Milligan. On the surface, there appears to be no daylight between Justice Alito and the Chief Justice. Yet it may have been Roberts’s preference to avoid striking down Section 2 entirely, at least to preserve the pretense of stare decisis. After all, the Chief Justice knows down to the decimal how often precedents are overruled.
Third, this ruling eliminates the asymmetry embedded in the Voting Rights Act. Democrats will lose their advantage in conservative states. For the 2026 midterms, it isn’t clear how big an effect this decision will have. But in the long run, especially after the 2030 census, Callais could be consequential. Still, it would be shortsighted to assume that political dynamics will remain static. For the first time in generations, Black and Hispanic voters will live in districts where the winner isn’t preordained. Callais could reshape how politicians on both sides of the aisle appeal to a demographic that has historically been neglected. Minority voters might even vote strategically in Republican primaries to influence tight races. As I often say, discount predictions of apocalyptic outcomes after a Supreme Court decision. Institutions can adapt to changing circumstances.
