WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to throw out one of Louisiana's legislative maps and impose a stricter standard for proving racial discrimination in redistricting cases. Following the ruling, plaintiffs challenging redistricting plans will now need to demonstrate that lawmakers intended to discriminate on the basis of race.
The Court accelerated its final action in the Louisiana redistricting case—typically a month-long process—giving state legislators just three weeks to respond before the congressional primary election. This timing invoked the Purcell principle, which holds that courts should avoid changing election rules close to an election to prevent voter confusion.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the conservative majority's recent actions risk being viewed as partisan. "We have to be really, really careful in this environment when we're dealing with issues that have a political overlay. We have to be scrupulous about sticking to the principles and the rules that we apply in every case," she said.
Wilfred Codrington, a professor at Cardozo Law School, criticized the Court’s reliance on the Purcell principle, calling it "flimsy in practice" and saying it is applied in ways that consistently benefit one party over the other. Codrington said Supreme Court justices are not showing their work in most Purcell-related cases and are not taking seriously the harms that minority voters might suffer. He previously conducted a study during the COVID pandemic that found nearly every Supreme Court decision applying the Purcell principle benefited Republicans, depressed voter turnout, and caused the very confusion the principle is meant to avoid.
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, defended the ruling, saying state legislatures are implementing the Supreme Court’s interpretation that race cannot be used in drawing boundary lines until a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is proven.