Oregon — Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek sharply criticized Tuesday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, claiming it “gutted” Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and opened the door to widespread disenfranchisement of voters of color. The 6-3 ruling, however, did no such thing. It held that compliance with a properly interpreted Section 2 cannot justify the intentional use of race in drawing congressional districts, and that Louisiana’s second majority-Black district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
In a statement released Wednesday, Kotek said the decision represents “a profound betrayal of the Voting Rights Act and of the generations of Americans who marched, fought, and gave their lives to make it law.” She accused the Court of “stripping Section 2 of its meaning at President Trump’s urging” and warned that the ruling “cleared a path for politicians to silence communities of color and redraw maps to entrench their own power.”
The Court’s opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, reached the opposite conclusion. Far from eliminating Section 2, the justices reaffirmed that the provision remains a valid tool to combat intentional racial discrimination in voting. What it rejected was the view, embraced by some lower courts, that Section 2 requires states to create additional majority-minority districts whenever mathematically possible.
Instead, the majority updated the 40-year-old Thornburg v. Gingles framework to better match the statutory text and the Fifteenth Amendment’s focus on purposeful discrimination. Plaintiffs must now offer race-neutral illustrative maps that satisfy all legitimate state districting criteria (including partisan goals) and must disentangle race from party affiliation when proving racially polarized voting. The Court emphasized that Section 2 protects minority voters’ “opportunity” to elect candidates of their choice, nothing more, nothing less, measured against the baseline created by a state’s neutral redistricting rules.
“Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was designed to enforce the Constitution — not collide with it,” Alito wrote. The decision explicitly leaves room for Section 2 liability when evidence shows a state intentionally drew maps to deny minority voters equal opportunity because of race. It simply holds that the Act does not compel the racial line-drawing Louisiana attempted in SB8 to satisfy an earlier lower-court order.
Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The majority noted that modern realities, a two-party system where race and partisanship often correlate, the non-justiciability of partisan gerrymandering claims, and sophisticated mapping software, make it easier to distinguish legitimate districting from unconstitutional racial gerrymanders.
Kotek’s statement makes no reference to the actual facts of the Louisiana case or the Court’s detailed textual analysis of Section 2. The opinion contains no mention of President Trump. The governor pledged to defend Oregon’s “voter-first” election system against any federal interference, though the ruling does not directly affect the state.
The decision reinforces long-standing constitutional limits on government use of race while preserving the Voting Rights Act’s core purpose. For Oregonians, it underscores that fair maps rest on neutral principles, not racial quotas, and that election integrity depends on equal protection under the law for every voter, regardless of background.
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