The Supreme Court’s conservative justices expressed concerns Monday about the future of race in redistricting, part of oral arguments in the yearslong fight over a second Black-majority congressional district in Louisiana.
The state and a group of voting rights plaintiffs asked the justices to preserve the state’s current congressional map, drawn to comply with the Voting Rights Act requirement that minorities get a chance to elect representatives of their choosing, and throw out a lower-court ruling that found that map violated the Constitution’s prohibition on racial gerrymandering.
The justices sounded open to keeping that current map, but the unusual alliance prompted a raft of questions from the court’s conservative wing that cast doubt about whether the VRA has a future in redistricting cases at all, even if the court does not take that step in this case.
