The Supreme Court invalidated Louisiana’s congressional map Wednesday ahead of the midterm elections, in a decision that reshaped legal protections for minority voters and could lead to further redistricting nationwide.
The 6-3 decision found that Louisiana should not have been forced to draw a second congressional map with a second Black majority district to comply with the Voting Rights Act, and the map it drew as a result violated the Constitution. The decision upheld a lower-court ruling that the state’s current map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The decision sent the case back to the lower court to handle the next steps. The outcome means that Louisiana might use for the coming midterm elections the first congressional map it drew after the 2020 census, which aimed for a 5-1 advantage for Republicans in the state’s congressional delegation.
