Louisiana v. Callais and the Magisterial Revolution
May 1, AD2026
Welcome to Friday Flashpoint where I analyze and expose important historical and social developments impacting America in the world
In a partisan 6-3 decision, Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s revised congressional map as an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander”, ruling that the Voting Rights Act (VRA) did not require the state to create an additional majority-minority district. The Court majority added that while complying with Section 2 of the VRA can serve as a compelling state interest, the statute must be narrowly construed to prohibit only intentional racial discrimination rather than mere disparate impact, ensuring minority voters receive the exact same electoral opportunities that naturally result from a state’s neutral redistricting criteria. The fatal flaw in the Court’s logic is history: the criteria in the impacted states cannot be blindly presumed neutral.
The Roberts Court writes fiction.
Justices have long abused the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments because they dislike that the Reconstruction Congress and States used their Constitutional authority to grant more power to Congress to enforce racial equality. The amendments abolished slavery and what are termed the "badges of slavery"—the conditions imposed on slaves that would not be imposed on a free (White) person.
These amendments granted sweeping political power to Congress when the States ratified them. Congress—which then included the input of the States because the state legislatures, and not the People, then elected the US Senate—has the full authority to determine what is appropriate because the People and States are both represented in Congress. The Supreme Court has intruded into a political matter while claiming constitutional grounds. They are lying, radical, and revolutionary; they are not conservative.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its 1982 amendments exercise the exclusive powers of Congress, explicitly granted by the states from 1865 to 1870. Those who wrote them knew the stakes, having just defeated the slaveholder rebellion of the so-called “confederate states of America”, and knew what they were doing.
John Roberts and Samuel Alito, whom George W. Bush appointed, do not like to think about race. They should move. This is America; we cannot wash away history. The Constitution is our history. The right to vote cannot be abridged because of race. Justice should be blind; Mr. Roberts and Mr. Alito wish she were a battered and concussed amnesiac, too. Tennessee and Alabama now want to redraw their districts to create more seats for the Republicans, and somehow these districts will wind up splitting areas that heavily Democratic and—for reasons the Supreme Court refuses to know—heavily African American, the descendants of the slaves. People who claim to know the original meaning of the Constitution apparently cannot know history if race is involved. They prefer it that way.
During oral arguments, Mr. Roberts claimed that the Louisiana district in question looked like a snake. Irrelevant. His aesthetic judgments are improper and have nothing to do with the question. Louisiana sued to protect the maps it designed. The supposedly “conservative” Supreme Court has told the state that it cannot have the maps it wants. By striking down Louisiana’s congressional map, the court sacrificed state sovereignty, statutory text, and historical reality to judicial preference. This is not conservative jurisprudence. It is magisterial revolution.
The Constitution of 1787 vests the authority over redistricting in the States unless Congress modifies it. Redistricting is a political act, historically and constitutionally left to the political branches which does not include the Courts. And there I think lies the problem. Justices do not like being told they have no say and no role, they do not like being reminded that Constitutionally they are the weakest branch. It is time to wake them up from their fairy tales and remind them.
I dissent. The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—“one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history.”(quoting the late Justice Ginsburg). It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court. I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act. — Justice Elena Kagan, dissenting from the decision in LOUISIANA v. CALLAIS ET AL declaring mandated minority districts unconstitutional.
Actually, Louisiana was arguing to keep their map, while the Court’s majority presents themselves as reliving Louisiana of a burden. Louisiana Senate Bill 8 was a political move to navigate their partisan desires and demographic reality in Louisiana, which maps onto partisan alignment. The Louisiana legislature, exercising its Constitutional right, designed the map to protect specific Republican incumbents—a legal, non-justiciable objective under Rucho v. Common Cause. Yet federal judges intervened, second-guessing the legislature’s motives and overriding its political calculations.
The court essentially punished Louisiana for complying with a lower court order that said they had to redraw their map; Louisiana Republicans redrew the map and protected their incumbents, which the Supreme Court previously said they could do way back in 2019 with Rucho v. Common Cause. Federal judges nullifying a state’s political map because they find the district lines insufficiently “disentangled” from race is the breed of judicial overreach actual conservatives have spent half a century fighting.
Justice Elena Kagan is the Constitutional conservative in this case. The power to decide this matter lies with Congress, and Congress had already decided. The Roberts Court is a renegade magisterium and America needs a thoroughgoing reformation.
To hear my full breakdown of the Reconstruction Amendments and how Congress can strip the courts of this power by reclaiming the redistricting process, listen to the next episode of the podcast coming tomorrow or Sunday.