Here we are in 2025, and Democrats are still demanding “separate but equal” policies for minorities.
That’s the essence of their argument before the Supreme Court in the case regarding majority-minority congressional districts. Leftists argue that, somehow, minorities are disenfranchised if they aren’t drawn into separate but equal districts so they can choose a member of Congress who best represents the melanin level in their skin.
It’s race-based identity politics that artificially benefits Democrats.
The background in Louisiana v. Callais is a series of lawsuits over Louisiana’s congressional districts under the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, specifically Section 2. First, Louisiana’s map had only one majority-black district. Black voters sued, alleging that packing black voters into one district violated the VRA. After a lower court ruled in their favor, the state redrew the map in 2024 to include two majority-black districts. White voters sued, calling it “unlawful, intentional discrimination based on race.”
Louisiana initially defended the map at a Supreme Court hearing in March. The Court punted, asking for a second hearing this week. The state now alleges that the map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the 15th Amendment’s right-to-vote provisions.
The conservative justices appeared poised to rule that way, which would open the door for significant shifts in election maps going forward.
Arguing for the state, Louisiana Solicitor General Ben Aguiñaga asserted that VRA standards “have placed states in impossible situations, where the only sure demand is more racial discrimination for more decades.” He believes there should be a sunset of sorts for certain VRA provisions, and several justices seemed to agree.
For example, Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that “race-based remedies are permissible” under the VRA, but that they “should not be indefinite and should have an endpoint.”
The facts bear that out. As Jason Riley notes in The Wall Street Journal, “In 1964, a year before the Voting Rights Act passed, black voter registration in Mississippi was less than 7%, the lowest in the region. Two years later, it was nearly 60%. Black voter registration in the South today is higher than it is in other parts of the country, and black voter registration nationwide has been rising for the past three decades.”
Obviously, the Left wants to perpetuate the segregation.
“If we take Louisiana as one example, every congressional member who is Black was elected from a Voting Rights Act-opportunity district,” argued NAACP attorney Janai Nelson. “We only have the diversity that we see across the south, for example, because of litigation that forced the creation of opportunity districts under the Voting Rights Act.”
Across the nation, just 15 of the 60 black members of Congress represent VRA districts.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson found a rather unique way to argue that states should continue counting by race when drawing congressional districts. She drew a long comparison with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), saying that Congress passed it “against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities, and so it was discriminatory in effect because these folks were not able to access these buildings.”
By comparison, she wondered, “We are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don’t have equal access to the voting system, right? They’re disabled.”
That sounds remarkably similar to the Democrats’ effective argument against voter ID laws. Blacks and other minorities, Democrats assert, are somehow less capable of obtaining legitimate IDs than white people; ergo, it’s discrimination to require IDs.
What a profoundly racist argument in both cases. It’s beyond ironic that a black Supreme Court justice is the one making it.
Just as racist is the idea that all blacks, minorities, women, gender-confused, etc., must think alike and vote Democrat. Counsel for Louisiana made this point: the map assumes “a black voter, simply because he is black, must think like other black voters, share the same interests, and prefer the same political candidates.”
Even Justice Jackson agreed that Section 2 of the VRA does not require majority-minority districts. So what’s the problem here? Why won’t this be a 9-0 ruling?
I do not doubt that the justices are well aware of the political implications, which could indeed be significant. One estimate predicts that redistricting that eliminates majority-minority districts would cost Democrats 12 congressional seats. Another estimate puts it at 19.
Obviously, that would outrage Democrats. What angers me, by contrast, is that Democrats have built their political power by dividing Americans into competing interest groups.
It’s 2025. Let’s do away with segregation and the “separate but equal” doctrine, once and for all.
