Appeals panel declines Louisiana's invitation to gut Voting Rights Act

Source: The Hill

08/14/25 1:58 PM ET


A federal appeals court panel declined Louisiana’s invitation to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) that has required the state to draw additional majority-minority districts, ruling Thursday that the argument is foreclosed by binding precedent.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision upholds a judge’s ruling that blocked Louisiana’s state legislative maps by finding they “packed” and “cracked” Black communities in violation of Section 2, the VRA’s central remaining provision.

The state urged the 5th Circuit, regarded as the nation’s most conservative federal appeals court, to use the case to rule Section 2 unconstitutional by finding that conditions in the state no longer justify race-conscious remedies.

The panel wrote that the Pelican State’s position would “eschew a clear mandate from the Supreme Court and disregard Congress’s intent,” only briefly addressing the argument in the final three of the opinion’s 54 pages. “The State’s challenge to the constitutionality of § 2 is foreclosed by decades of binding precedent affirming Congress’s broad enforcement authority under the Fifteenth Amendment,” the ruling reads.

Read more: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5452519-appeals-court-louisiana-voting-rights-act/