* The ruling is here if you need it. SCOTUSblog…

The Supreme Court on Wednesday, in the case of Louisiana v. Callais, struck down a Louisiana congressional map that a group of voters who describe themselves as “non-African American” had challenged as the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. By a vote of 6-3, the justices left in place a ruling by a federal court that barred the state from using the map, which had created a second majority-Black district, in future elections. Although Wednesday’s ruling did not strike down a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, as Louisiana and the challengers had asked the court to do, Justice Elena Kagan suggested in her dissent (which was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson) that the majority opinion by Justice Samuel Alito had rendered the provision “all but a dead letter.”

The decision was the latest, and presumably final, chapter in a long-running dispute arising from Louisiana’s efforts to adopt a new congressional map in the wake of the 2020 census. The first map that the state adopted, in 2022, had one majority-Black district out of the six allotted to the state. A group of Black voters – who comprise roughly one-third of the state’s population – went to federal court, where they alleged that the map violated Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits discrimination in voting. […]

In this case, Alito said, Louisiana’s goal in adopting the 2024 map “was racial”: the state enacted it in the wake of the lower court’s finding that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2, and sought to avoid having the court impose a different map that would have created a second majority-Black district but which would also “have imperiled one of the influential incumbents the legislature sought to protect.” […]

In a somber tone, Kagan read a summary of her 48-page dissent from the bench – a signal of her strong disagreement with the majority’s ruling. “The Voting Rights Act,” she wrote “is—or, now more accurately, was—‘one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation’s history.’” But the requirements that the court imposes on Wednesday, she contended, “will effectively insulate any practice, including any districting scheme, said by a State to have any race-neutral justification. That justification can sound in traditional districting criteria, or else can sound in politics and partisanship. As to the latter, the State need do nothing more than announce a partisan gerrymander,” she said. “Assuming the State has left behind no smoking-gun evidence of a race-based motive (an almost fanciful prospect), Section 2 will play no role.”

* Gov. JB Pritzker was asked today about the ruling’s impact on Illinois…

I talked to lawyers this morning, people who are experts in this, who’ve said that everything that we have in Illinois now is constitutional, even under the new ruling. So I’m sure there will be people who try to attack it. But the reality is that if you read through the Supreme Court decision, I’m told that it validates the maps that are already in place.

* I also consulted with an election law attorney who has been involved in redistricting here…

When drawing a legislative map, the General Assembly must adhere to the U.S. Constitution and federal law, in addition to the Illinois Constitution and state law. For at least a decade it has been clear that the 14th and 15th Amendments prohibit using race as a predominant factor in drawing a map. In 2011, Illinois adopted the Illinois Voting Rights Act which urges the creation of crossover districts, coalition districts, or influence districts “in addition and subordinate to any requirements or obligations imposed by the United States Constitution, any federal law regarding redistricting Legislative Districts or Representative Districts, including but not limited to the federal Voting Rights Act, and the Illinois Constitution.” For the last 2 cycles, the General Assembly produced a document publicly explaining how and why districts were drawn, and it was clear that race was not the predominant or only critieria used to draw the maps.

The most recent explanation for how districts are drawn can be read here or here.

* The East St. Louis NAACP tried to overturn the latest remap because map-makers diluted Black voting strength in the 114th House District. A federal court rebuffed the claim…

In the end, East St. Louis NAACP Plaintiffs’ evidence amounts to a claim that “the district’s shape, its splitting of towns and counties, and its high [White] voting population” together with various public statements that legislators were aware of race shows that race predominated the 2021 legislative redistricting cycle. See Cromartie II, 532 U.S. at 243. The Supreme Court’s decisions since Cromartie II tell us that this direct and circumstantial evidence is not enough to support a finding that race predominated over politics where, as here, the record is replete with political and other traditional justifications for the districts that the legislature drew. Accordingly, we reject East St. Louis NAACP Plaintiffs’ racial gerrymandering challenge to HD 114.

Interestingly enough, the incumbent Black House Democratic member went on to lose to a White Republican in 2022. The House Democrats have not yet been able to flip that seat back.