Oregon — The Democratic Party of Oregon sharply condemned Tuesday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, claiming it gutted the Voting Rights Act and represented an “unprecedented step back in the fight for racial justice and fair representation.” Party Chair Nathan Soltz said the 6-3 ruling was an attempt by “Trump and the GOP” to silence voters of color ahead of the midterms.
In a statement released Wednesday, Soltz declared: “I am outraged by this decision from the Court. This is an unprecedented step back in the fight for racial justice and fair representation. Trump and the GOP know that they’re facing defeat in the midterms as Americans suffer from skyrocketing costs, and this is their attempt to silence voters. But make no mistake: Democrats across the country will take every measure to ensure that all Americans have their voices heard this November.”
The Supreme Court’s opinion reached a different conclusion. In a majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, the Court ruled that Louisiana’s SB8 congressional map, which deliberately created a second majority Black district to comply with a lower court order, was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Far from “gutting” Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the justices clarified that the provision does not require states to draw race predominant districts whenever a majority minority district is mathematically possible. The Court updated the Thornburg v. Gingles framework to align with the statutory text and the Fifteenth Amendment’s prohibition on intentional racial discrimination. Plaintiffs must now produce race neutral illustrative maps that satisfy all legitimate state criteria, including partisan and traditional districting goals, and must disentangle race from party affiliation when proving polarized voting.
“Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was designed to enforce the Constitution, not collide with it,” Alito wrote. The ruling explicitly preserves Section 2 liability where evidence shows a state intentionally diluted minority voting strength because of race. It simply rejects the view that the Act compels racial line drawing as a remedy for every conceivable disparity.
Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The majority responded that decades of lower court applications had sometimes forced states into the very race based decision making the Constitution forbids, especially in an era of advanced mapping software and a two party system where race and partisanship frequently correlate.
The Democratic Party of Oregon’s statement makes no reference to the specific facts of the Louisiana case or the Court’s detailed textual analysis. The case is Louisiana v. Callais, Nos. 24 109 and 24 110. The full opinion is available on the Supreme Court’s website.
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