Amicus Curiae Brief — Louisiana, Appellant v. Phillip Callais, et al.

Supreme Court briefSep 3, 2025

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Nos. 24-109, 24-110

IN THE

Supreme Court of the United States

_______________________

STATE OF LOUISIANA,

Appellant,

PHILLIP CALLAIS, ET AL.,

Appellees.

__________

PRESS ROBINSON, ET AL.,

Appellants,

PHILLIP CALLAIS, ET AL.,

Appellees.

______________________

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Western District of Louisiana

______________________

SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF OF CONSTITUTIONAL

ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER AS AMICUS CURIAE IN

SUPPORT OF ROBINSON APPELLANTS

_______________________

ELIZABETH B. WYDRA

BRIANNE J. GOROD*

DAVID H. GANS

ANNA K. JESSURUN

CONSTITUTIONAL

ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER

1730 Rhode Island Ave. NW

Suite 1200

Washington, D.C. 20036

(202) 296-6889

brianne@theusconstitution.org

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

September 3, 2025

* Counsel of Record

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES .................................

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE ......................

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT.................................................................

ARGUMENT .........................................................

As Its Text and History Demonstrate,

the Fifteenth Amendment Gives Congress Broad Enforcement Power to

Prevent Impairment of the Right to

Vote .......................................................

Congress Used Its Express Power to

Enforce the Fifteenth Amendment to

Prohibit Dilutive Practices that Nullify the Effectiveness of Black Votes ....

Race-consciousness Is Baked into the

Text and History of the Fifteenth

Amendment. ..........................................

CONCLUSION ....................................................

II.

III.

(i)

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

Cases

Page(s)

Abbott v. Perez,

585 U.S. 579 (2018) ....................................

Allen v. Milligan,

599 U.S. 1 (2023) ....................... 2, 4, 11, 13-17

Allen v. Milligan,

144 S. Ct. 476 (2023) ..................................

Allen v. State Bd. of Elections,

393 U.S. 544 (1969) ....................................

Bartlett v. Strickland,

556 U.S. 1 (2009) ........................................

Chisolm v. Roemer,

501 U.S. 380 (1991) ....................................

City of Mobile v. Bolden,

446 U.S. 55 (1980) ......................................

Gomillion v. Lightfoot,

364 U.S. 339 (1960) ...................................

Johnson v. De Grandy,

512 U.S. 997 (1994) .................................. 13, 15

Lane v. Wilson,

307 U.S. 268 (1939) ....................................

League of United Latin Am. Citizens v. Perry,

548 U.S. 399 (2006) ................................... 13, 15

Nairne v. Landry,

-- F.4th --, 2025 WL 2355524 (5th Cir. Aug.

14, 2025) .....................................................

iii

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES – cont’d

Page(s)

N.C. State Conf. of NAACP v. McCrory,

831 F.3d 204 (4th Cir. 2016) ......................

Reno v. Bossier Par. Sch. Bd.,

528 U.S. 320 (2000) ....................................

Rice v. Cayetano,

528 U.S. 495 (2000) .................................... 5, 11

Shaw v. Hunt,

517 U.S. 899 (1996) ....................................

Shaw v. Reno,

509 U.S. 630 (1993) ....................................

Singleton v. Allen,

Nos. 21-cv-1291, 21-cv-1530, 2025 WL

1342947 (N.D. Ala. May 8, 2025)...............

South Carolina v. Katzenbach,

383 U.S. 301 (1966) ...................................

Thornburg v. Gingles,

478 U.S. 30 (1986) ..................................... 13, 14

United States v. Marengo Cnty. Comm’n,

731 F.2d 1546 (11th Cir. 1984) .................

Voinovich v. Quilter,

507 U.S. 146 (1993) ...................................

Wesberry v. Sanders,

376 U.S. 1 (1964) .......................................

White v. State Bd. of Election Comm’rs,

No. 22-cv-62, 2025 WL 2406437

(N.D. Miss. Aug. 19, 2025) ........................

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES – cont’d

Page(s)

Yick Wo v. Hopkins,

118 U.S. 356 (1886) ...................................

Statutes, Constitutional Provisions, and Legislative

Materials

Act of May 31, 1870, ch. 114, 16 Stat. 140 ..

Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.

(1866) .........................................................

Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 3d Sess.

(1869) ............................................ 4, 7, 9, 17, 18

Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 2d Sess.

(1870) ...................................... 2, 3, 8-10, 19, 20

Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 2d Sess.

(1872) ..........................................................

S. Rep. No. 97-417 (1982) ............................. 13, 14

52 U.S.C. § 10301(b) ..................................... 11, 13

U.S. Const. amend. XV................................. 5, 8, 9

Books, Articles, and Other Authorities

Vikram David Amar & Alan Brownstein,

The Hybrid Nature of Political Rights,

50 Stan. L. Rev. 915 (1998) ................... 2, 10, 18

Steven G. Calabresi & Andrea Matthews,

Originalism and Loving v. Virginia,

2012 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 1393 (2012) ...............

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES – cont’d

Page(s)

Travis Crum, Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, 70 Duke L.J. 261 (2020).... 4, 6

Chandler Davidson, White Gerrymandering

of Black Voters: A Response to Professor

Everett, 79 N.C. L. Rev. 1333 (2001) ......... 3, 11

Frederick Douglass, Reconstruction, Atlantic Monthly (Nov. 1866), in 2 The Reconstruction Amendments: Essential Documents (Kurt T. Lash ed., 2021) ..................

4 The Frederick Douglass Papers

(J. Blassingame & J. McKivigan

eds., 1991) ...................................................

J. Morgan Kousser, Colorblind Injustice:

Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing

of the Second Reconstruction (1999) ..........

Douglas Laycock, Conceptual Gulfs in City

of Boerne v. Flores, 39 Wm. & M. L. Rev.

743 (1998) ...................................................

Michael W. McConnell, Comment, Institutions and Interpretation: A Critique of

City of Boerne v. Flores,

111 Harv. L. Rev. 153 (1997) .....................

James M. McPherson, The Struggle for

Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in

the Civil War and Reconstruction (1964) ..

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES – cont’d

Page(s)

Proceedings of the Nat’l Convention of Colored Men, Held in the City of Syracuse,

N.Y. (1864) ..................................................

Proceedings of the Convention of the Colored People of VA., Held in the City of Alexandria (Cowing and Gillis 1865) ............

Tenn. House J. (1869-70), in 2 The Reconstruction Amendments: Essential Documents (Kurt T. Lash ed., 2021) ..................

Webster’s New International Dictionary

(2d ed. 1950) ...............................................

INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE1

Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) is a

think tank and public interest law firm dedicated to

fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution’s

text and history. CAC works in our courts, through

our government, and with legal scholars to improve

understanding of the Constitution and to preserve the

rights, freedoms, and structural safeguards that our

nation’s charter guarantees. CAC has a strong interest in the questions this case raises about the scope of

the Fifteenth Amendment’s protections and Congress’s power to enforce those protections and accordingly has an interest in this case.

INTRODUCTION AND

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

After a federal district court and two panels of the

Fifth Circuit concluded that Louisiana’s 2022 congressional map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting

Rights Act, the Louisiana Legislature (“Legislature”)

enacted a new map—SB8—with an additional majority-Black district that all the courts agreed was necessary to remedy the Section 2 violation. The court below, however, held that the Legislature’s actions were

unconstitutional, concluding that its decision to create

a second majority-Black district (as was required to

remedy the Section 2 violation), while furthering other

permissible redistricting goals, resulted in a racial gerrymander.

1 Pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 37.6, amicus curiae states

that no counsel for a party authored this brief in whole or in part,

and no party or counsel for a party made a monetary contribution

intended to fund the preparation or submission of this brief. No

person other than amicus curiae or its counsel made a monetary

contribution to its preparation or submission.

After briefing and oral argument last Term, this

Court ordered supplemental briefing on the question

of whether the State’s intentional creation of a second

majority-minority district violates the Fourteenth or

Fifteenth Amendments. The answer is no: it is constitutionally permissible for state mapmakers and other

actors to take race into account in drawing maps that

comply with the Voting Rights Act, particularly where,

as here, the state acts to rectify discriminatory maps

that a court has previously found unlawful.

As this Court observed two years ago in Allen v.

Milligan, 599 U.S. 1 (2023), “for the last four decades,

this Court and the lower federal courts have repeatedly applied the effects test of § 2 . . . and, under certain circumstances, have authorized race-based redistricting as a remedy for state districting maps that violate § 2.” Id. at 41; see, e.g., id. at 19 (collecting cases).

The unbroken string of this Court’s cases making clear

that the Act requires state actors to “account for the

race of voters so as to prevent the cracking or packing—whether intentional or not—of large and geographically compact minority populations,” id. at 44

(Kavanaugh, J., concurring), is entirely consistent

with the text and history of the Fifteenth Amendment.

Ratified in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment gave

Congress the “power of conferring upon the colored

man the full enjoyment of his right” and “enable[d]

Congress to take every step that might be necessary to

secure the colored man in the enjoyment of these

rights.” Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 2d Sess. 3670 (1870).

Against the backdrop of a political system divided by

race, the Framers of the Fifteenth Amendment recognized that “the black populations in the South would

be under siege” and that “political influence and voting

power would be their sole means of defense.” Vikram

David Amar & Alan Brownstein, The Hybrid Nature of

Political Rights, 50 Stan. L. Rev. 915, 939 (1998). They

drafted the Fifteenth Amendment to give Congress

broad power—no less sweeping than Congress’s Article I powers—to stamp out every conceivable attempt

by the states to deny or abridge the right to vote on

account of race.

Congress thus has broad authority under the Fifteenth Amendment to set aside dilutive practices that

exploit racially polarized voting to cancel out or minimize the voting strength of communities of color. And

it also has broad authority to redress the tragic fact

that “whites have ruthlessly, systematically, and

pretty much without hindrance gerrymandered African-American voters in this country from Reconstruction to the modern era.” Chandler Davidson, White

Gerrymandering of Black Voters: A Response to Professor Everett, 79 N.C. L. Rev. 1333, 1334 (2001). This

authority includes the power to protect the right to

vote against all forms of racial discrimination—both

heavy-handed and subtle—to ensure “the colored man

the full enjoyment of his right,” Cong. Globe, 41st

Cong. 2d Sess. 3670 (1870), and to “prevent any state

from discriminating against a voter on account of

race,” id. at 3663.

This broad power to legislate prophylactically to

safeguard the right to vote from state denials or

abridgements was deemed “necessary to neutralize the

deep-rooted prejudice of the white race there against

the negro.” Id. at app. 392. Given the intransigence

of white-dominated state legislatures, the Framers of

the Fifteenth Amendment understood that the “only

means” for Black people “to secure [their] dearest privileges are to be found in national legislation.” Id.

Congress used this express power to enact Section

2 of the Voting Rights Act and then to amend it in 1982

to ensure that citizens of color equally enjoy the right

to choose representatives of their choice. Congress understood that this could not be done without taking account of race. As Milligan recognized, “Section 2 itself

‘demands consideration of race,’” 599 U.S. at 30-31

(plurality opinion) (quoting Abbott v. Perez, 585 U.S.

579, 587 (2018)), to prevent state action “that renders

a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority

voter,” id. at 25 (majority opinion).

Appellees’ insistence on color-blindness in redistricting thus ignores that race-consciousness is at the

Fifteenth Amendment’s core. The Framers wrote the

Fifteenth Amendment to safeguard equal political opportunity for all because they recognized that the right

to vote would empower members of the Black community to “protect themselves in the southern reconstructed States” from attacks on their rights. Cong.

Globe, 40th Cong., 3d Sess. 1008 (1869). Moreover,

given the persistence of racially polarized voting and

the likelihood that white-dominated state legislatures

would seek to curtail the power of Black voters, the

Fifteenth Amendment was premised on the idea that

race matters, and in this respect, “[r]acially polarized

voting was a feature—not a bug—in the passage and

ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment,” Travis

Crum, Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, 70

Duke L.J. 261, 266 (2020).

Accordingly, when Section 2’s prohibition on discriminatory results mandates drawing an additional

majority-minority district in a given redistricting map,

as clearly established law sometimes requires and as

seven federal judges agreed was necessary here, a

state’s creation of such a district is not unconstitutional merely because the remedial mapmakers took

race into account along with a host of other legitimate

districting factors. On the contrary, drawing remedial

districts is sometimes necessary to realize the goal of

the Fifteenth Amendment—a multiracial democracy

in which citizens of color have an equal opportunity to

elect representatives of their choice. An interpretation

of the Reconstruction Amendments that would prohibit all consideration of race in drawing such remedial districts would deprive Congress of the power to

remedy a longstanding and pernicious form of racial

discrimination in voting and would turn the Constitution on its head. This Court should reject that erroneous view and reverse the judgment of the district court.

ARGUMENT

I. As Its Text and History Demonstrate, the

Fifteenth Amendment Gives Congress

Broad Enforcement Power to Prevent Impairment of the Right to Vote.

In language “as simple in command as it [is] comprehensive in reach,” Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U.S. 495,

512 (2000), the Fifteenth Amendment provides that

“[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall

not be denied or abridged by the United States or by

any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” U.S. Const. amend. XV, § 1. “Fundamental in purpose and effect . . . , the Amendment

prohibits all provisions denying or abridging the voting franchise of any citizen or class of citizens on the

basis of race.” Rice, 528 U.S. at 512.

The Fifteenth Amendment forbids both laws that

deny the right to vote outright on account of race and

those that abridge the right by diluting the voting

strength of citizens of color and nullifying the effectiveness of their votes. See Reno v. Bossier Par. Sch. Bd.,

528 U.S. 320, 333-34 (2000) (explaining that the “core

meaning” of “‘abridge’” is “‘shorten’” (quoting Webster’s New International Dictionary 7 (2d ed. 1950)));

Steven G. Calabresi & Andrea Matthews, Originalism

and Loving v. Virginia, 2012 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 1393,

1417-18 (2012) (demonstrating that “[t]he word

‘abridge’ in 1868 meant . . . [t]o lessen” or “to diminish”

and that laws that gave “African Americans a lesser

and diminished” set of freedoms unconstitutionally

abridged their constitutional rights); Crum, supra, at

323 (“The Reconstruction Framers’ use of the word

‘abridged’ militates in favor of broadly protecting the

right to vote. At the time, dictionaries defined

‘abridge’ as ‘to contract,’ ‘to diminish,’ or ‘[t]o deprive

of.’ . . . And since the term ‘denied’ adequately captures the scenario where a voter is prevented from

casting their ballot, the term ‘abridge’ presumably carries this broader meaning.” (citation omitted)).

The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment was

the culmination of a long campaign to ensure that

Black Americans could participate in the political process as equal citizens and were not consigned to what

Frederick Douglass called “emasculated citizenship.”

Frederick Douglass, Reconstruction, Atlantic Monthly

(Nov. 1866), in 2 The Reconstruction Amendments: Essential Documents 296 (Kurt T. Lash ed., 2021). Indeed, conventions of Black Americans had long demanded the right to vote, insisting that the right to

vote was “the keystone to the arch of human liberty,”

see Proceedings of the Nat’l Convention of Colored Men,

Held in the City of Syracuse, N.Y. 60 (1864), and the

only true “safe-guard for our protection,” see Proceedings of the Convention of the Colored People of VA.,

Held in the City of Alexandria 9 (Cowing and Gillis

1865). As they recognized, without the right to participate in our democracy on equal terms, equal citizenship was illusory. As Douglass put it, “to tell me that

I am an equal American citizen, and, in the same

breath, tell me that my right to vote may be constitutionally taken from me by some other equal citizen or

citizens, is to tell me that my citizenship is but an

empty name.” See James M. McPherson, The Struggle

for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil

War and Reconstruction 355 (1964) (quoting

Douglass’s writings).

The Amendment’s drafters in Congress agreed, explaining that a constitutional prohibition on state denial and abridgement of the right to vote on account of

race was necessary because “[t]he ballot is as much the

bulwark of liberty to the black man as it is to the

white,” Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 3d Sess. 983 (1869),

and because “[n]o man is safe in his person or his property in a community where he has no voice in the protection of either,” id. at 693; id. at 912 (“Suffrage is the

only sure guarantee which the negro can have . . . in

the enjoyment of his civil rights. Without it his freedom will be imperfect, if not in peril of total overthrow.”); id. at 983 (“Without the ballot . . . [h]e is powerless to secure the redress of any grievance which society may put upon him.”). The right to vote, the

Framers of the Fifteenth Amendment understood, was

“preservative of all rights.” Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118

U.S. 356, 370 (1886); Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1,

17 (1964) (“Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined.”). In this respect, the Framers viewed the right to vote as “kindred

to that which belongs under natural law to the right of

self-defense.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 174

(1866). The Fifteenth Amendment thus gave Black citizens a critical weapon to protect themselves from

white-dominated legislatures seeking to roll back their

rights.

With its ratification, congressmen hailed that

“[t]he negro race, downtrodden and long held in chattel

slavery, has at last been placed by the Fifteenth

Amendment on the same platform with other citizens.”

Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 2d Sess. app. 393 (1870).

Frederick Douglass celebrated that the Fifteenth

Amendment “means that we are placed upon an equal

footing with all other men” and that “liberty is to be

the right of all.” 4 The Frederick Douglass Papers 27071 (J. Blassingame & J. McKivigan eds., 1991).

To make the Fifteenth Amendment’s guarantee a

reality, the Framers explicitly invested Congress with

a central role in protecting the right to vote against all

forms of racial discrimination. They did so by providing that “[t]he Congress shall have power to enforce

this article by appropriate legislation.” U.S. Const.

amend. XV, § 2. By adding this language, “the Framers indicated that Congress was to be chiefly responsible for implementing the rights created” by the

Amendment and that Congress would have “full remedial powers to effectuate the constitutional prohibition

against racial discrimination in voting.” South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 325-26 (1966).

As the Framers of the Fifteenth Amendment recognized, “the remedy for the violation” of the Fifteenth

Amendment, like the remedies for the violation of the

other Reconstruction Amendments, “was expressly not

left to the courts. The remedy was legislative, because

. . . the amendment itself provided that it shall be enforced by legislation on the part of Congress.” Cong.

Globe, 42d Cong., 2d Sess. 525 (1872). The enforcement power “was born of the conviction that Congress—no less than the courts—has the duty and the

authority to interpret the Constitution.” Michael W.

McConnell, Comment, Institutions and Interpretation:

A Critique of City of Boerne v. Flores, 111 Harv. L.

Rev. 153, 183 (1997). And Congress refused to leave

the right to vote “to the unchecked discretion of the Supreme Court that decided Dred Scott v. Sanford.”

Douglas Laycock, Conceptual Gulfs in City of Boerne

v. Flores, 39 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 743, 765 (1998).

The Fifteenth Amendment’s express grant of

power to enact “appropriate legislation” gives Congress wide discretion to enact whatever measures it

deems “appropriate” for achieving the Amendment’s

objective of ensuring that “[t]he right of citizens of the

United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged

. . . by any State on account of race.” U.S. Const.

amend. XV. The Enforcement Clause gives Congress

a broad “affirmative power” to secure the right to vote.

Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 3d Sess. 727 (1869). The

Framers of the Fifteenth Amendment feared that

without an expansive enforcement power, the constitutional guarantee of equal voting rights would not be

fully realized. “Who is to stand as the champion of the

individual and enforce the guarantees of the Constitution in his behalf as against the so-called sovereignty

of the States? Clearly no power but that of the central

Government is or can be competent for their adjustment . . . .” Id. at 984.

In 1870, the same year the Fifteenth Amendment

was ratified, Congress employed the Amendment’s Enforcement Clause to enact federal voting rights legislation. As the debates over the Enforcement Act of

1870 reflect, the Fifteenth Amendment “clothes Congress with all power to secure the end which it declares

shall be accomplished.” Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 2d

Sess. 3563 (1870). The Amendment’s Enforcement

Clause, Senator Oliver Morton explained, was “intended to give to Congress the power of conferring

upon the colored man the full enjoyment of his right.

We so understood it when we passed it.” Id. at 3670.

“[T]he second section was put there,” he went on to explain, “for the purpose of enabling Congress to take

every step that might be necessary to secure the

colored man in the enjoyment of these rights.” Id.

Thus, “the colored man, so far as voting is concerned,

shall be placed on the same level and footing with the

white man and . . . Congress shall have the power to

secure him that right.” Id.

In the months following ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, “[l]egislators anticipated that the

majority of whites, who harbored virulent ill-will toward their former slaves, would engage in racial bloc

voting; only the votes of the black masses could offset

this white political aggression.” Amar & Brownstein,

supra, at 941. The grim reality that “[t]he States can

invent just as many requirements [for voting] as you

have fingers and toes” made it “essential to provide

“proper machinery . . . for enforcing the fifteenth

amendment.” Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 2d Sess. 3658

(1870). Congressmen insisted that “it is our imperative duty . . . to pass suitable laws to enforce the fifteenth amendment” because, without them, “the fifteenth amendment will be practically disregarded in

every community where there is a strong prejudice

against negro voting.” Id. at 3568. The only means to

safeguard equal political opportunities and ensure the

multiracial democracy the Fifteenth Amendment

promised, Congressmen insisted, “are to be found in

national legislation. This security cannot be obtained

through State legislation,” where “the laws are made

by an oppressing race.” Id. at app. 392. Stringent national safeguards were needed to “neutralize the deeprooted prejudice of the white race there against the negro” and “secure his dearest privileges” at the ballot

box. Id.

The Fifteenth Amendment thus gave Congress a

significant new power. As the next Section shows,

Congress used this power in passing the Voting Rights

Act to set aside dilutive electoral practices, like

Louisiana’s 2022 congressional map, which have long

been used to undercut the Fifteenth Amendment’s

guarantee of equal political opportunity.

II. Congress Used Its Express Power to Enforce

the Fifteenth Amendment to Prohibit Dilutive Practices that Nullify the Effectiveness

of Black Votes.

Tragically, the Fifteenth Amendment “proved little more than a parchment promise.” Milligan, 599

U.S. at 10. The passage of the Voting Rights Act—after nearly a century of efforts to flout the Fifteenth

Amendment’s mandate—was necessary precisely because the Fifteenth Amendment alone was insufficient

to ensure that citizens of color in fact enjoyed equal

opportunity “to participate in the political process and

to elect representatives of their choice.” 52 U.S.C.

§ 10301(b).

Efforts to circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment’s

broad mandate of equality emerged almost immediately. “Manipulative devices and practices were soon

employed to deny the vote to blacks,” Rice, 528 U.S. at

513, or to “reduce or nullify minority voters’ ability, as

a group, ‘to elect the candidate of their choice,’” Shaw

v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 641 (1993) (quoting Allen v.

State Bd. of Elections, 393 U.S. 544, 569 (1969)).

Throughout the South, “[g]errymanders were the paradigm of the dilution strategy.” J. Morgan Kousser,

Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the

Undoing of the Second Reconstruction 26 (1999). State

governments packed and cracked Black voters into

gerrymandered districts to undercut the Fifteenth

Amendment’s guarantee of equal political opportunity.

See Davidson, supra, at 1334 (“Briefly put, whites have

ruthlessly, systematically, and pretty much without

hindrance gerrymandered African-American voters in

this country from Reconstruction to the modern era.”).

This Court has since made clear that the Fifteenth

Amendment prohibits any “contrivances by a state to

thwart equality in the enjoyment of the right to vote

by citizens of the United States regardless of race or

color,” Lane v. Wilson, 307 U.S. 268, 275 (1939), including weakening the voting strength of voters of color

through racial gerrymandering, see Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 346 (1960) (“[w]hen a legislature

thus singles out a readily isolated segment of a racial

minority for special discriminatory treatment, it violates the Fifteenth Amendment”). However, in City of

Mobile v. Bolden, 446 U.S. 55 (1980), a plurality of this

Court stated that a challenge to a municipality’s atlarge election system, whether brought under the

Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment, failed absent

proof of a “racially discriminatory motivation,” which

the plurality insisted was a “necessary ingredient of a

Fifteenth Amendment violation.” Id. at 62. And because the national prohibition on racial discrimination

in voting contained in Section 2 of the Voting Rights

Act “no more than elaborates upon . . . the Fifteenth

Amendment,” the plurality insisted that “it was intended to have an effect no different than the Fifteenth

Amendment itself.” Id. at 60, 61.

Congress responded by amending Section 2 of the

Voting Rights Act, employing its express power to enforce the right to vote free from racial discrimination

“to make clear that certain practices and procedures

that result in the denial or abridgement of the right to

vote are forbidden even though the absence of proof of

discriminatory intent protects them from constitutional challenge.” Chisolm v. Roemer, 501 U.S. 380,

383-84 (1991). Congress recognized that “the right to

vote can be affected by a dilution of voting power as

well as by an absolute prohibition on casting a ballot”

and acted to eliminate all “discriminatory election

systems or practices which operate, designedly or otherwise, to minimize or cancel out the voting strength

and political effectiveness of minority groups.” S. Rep.

No. 97-417, at 6, 28 (1982); see id. at 19 (“There is more

to the right to vote than the right to mark a piece of

paper and drop it in a box or the right to pull a lever in

a voting booth. The right to vote includes the right to

have . . . the vote counted at full value without dilution

or discount.”). Significantly, state practices, including

districting schemes, that exploited racially polarized

voting to dilute the voting strength of communities of

color and nullify the effectiveness of their votes were

paradigmatic examples of state practices that resulted

in the denial or abridgment of the right to vote. See

Milligan, 599 U.S. at 40 (stressing that “Congress

adopted the amended § 2 in response to . . . a case

about districting”).

To effectuate its goal of prohibiting state practices

that resulted in the denial or abridgment of the right

to vote, Congress chose language designed to enforce

the constitutional guarantee of equal political opportunities for all citizens regardless of race and strike at

the full range of state practices that limit the ability of

citizens of color “to participate in the political process

and to elect representatives of their choice.” 52 U.S.C.

§ 10301(b). As this Court has repeatedly held, Section

2 covers instances in which state mapmakers exploit

racially polarized voting by packing and cracking communities of color to dilute the effectiveness of their

votes. See, e.g., Milligan, 599 U.S. at 38-39; League of

United Latin Am. Citizens v. Perry, 548 U.S. 399, 43842 (2006); Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1007

(1994); Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146, 153-54

(1993); Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30, 47-51

(1986).

When amending Section 2, Congress understood

that race had to be taken into account to determine

whether an electoral practice violated Section 2. In

“communities in our Nation where racial politics . . .

dominate the electoral process,” Congress explained,

“a particular election method can deny minority voters

equal opportunity to participate meaningfully in elections.” S. Rep. No. 97-417, at 33. Thus, to identify and

remedy Section 2 violations, Congress knew that mapmakers had to be conscious of how a districting map

intersected with racially polarized voting to ensure

that the map does not “minimize or cancel out the voting strength and political effectiveness of minority

groups.” Id. at 28. Put differently, for Congress, the

consideration of race was essential to fulfilling Section

2’s aim of equal opportunity for voters of color.

Courts have applied Section 2 to districting maps

“in an unbroken line of decisions stretching four decades.” Milligan, 599 U.S. at 38. As this Court explained in Milligan, “[t]he essence of a § 2 claim . . . is

that a certain electoral law, practice, or structure interacts with social and historical conditions to cause

an inequality in the opportunities enjoyed by black

and white voters.” Id. at 17 (quoting Gingles, 478 U.S.

at 47). The “risk” that “an ‘electoral structure operates

to minimize or cancel out’ minority voters’ ‘ability to

elect their preferred candidates’” is “greatest ‘where

minority and majority voters consistently prefer different candidates’ and where minority voters are submerged in a majority voting population that ‘regularly

defeat[s]’ their choices.” Id. at 17-18 (quoting Gingles,

478 U.S. at 48). As Milligan reaffirmed, “[a] district is

not equally open, in other words, when minority voters

face—unlike their majority peers—bloc voting along

racial lines, arising against the backdrop of substantial racial discrimination within the State, that

renders a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority voter.” Id. at 25.

To determine whether an electoral map violates

Section 2, courts apply the longstanding Gingles test.

See id. at 19 (“Gingles has governed our Voting Rights

Act jurisprudence since it was decided”). Under Gingles, courts and mapmakers must take race into account by asking, for example, whether the minority

group is “sufficiently large and [geographically] compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district.” See id. at 18 (internal quotation marks

omitted); see also id. (explaining the Gingles preconditions and the totality of the circumstances inquiry,

both of which consider race); id. at 30-31 (plurality

opinion) (“Section 2 itself ‘demands consideration of

race.’” (quoting Abbott, 581 U.S at 587)). At the same

time, Gingles, together with the Fourteenth Amendment’s prohibition of racial predominance in redistricting, see Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899, 907 (1996), protects against the excessive use of race in drawing district lines. See Robinson Appellants Supp. Br. 25; Milligan, 599 U.S. at 26-28; id. at 43-44 (Kavanaugh, J.,

concurring).

The Gingles test, particularly its totality of the circumstances inquiry, demands an “‘intensely local appraisal’ of the electoral mechanism at issue, as well as

a ‘searching practical evaluation of the past and present reality.’” Milligan, 599 U.S. at 19 (quoting Gingles, 468 U.S. at 79). Courts applying Gingles must

thus pay close attention to whether the “effect of the[]

[State’s] choices” is to “deny[] equal opportunity” to

voters of color. League of United Latin Am. Citizens,

548 U.S. at 441-42; see Johnson, 512 U.S. at 1018 (explaining that “[t]he need for such ‘totality’ review

springs from the demonstrated ingenuity of state and

local governments in

power”).

hobbling

minority

voting

Thus, although a Section 2 remedy does not always

require the creation of a majority-minority district, see

Robinson Appellants Supp. Br. 24, if Gingles’ “exacting

requirements” are satisfied, Milligan, 599 U.S. at 30,

courts have, “under certain circumstances, . . . authorized race-based redistricting as a remedy for state districting maps that violate § 2,” id. at 41, including the

creation of a majority-minority district if necessary.

Indeed, this Court did just that in Milligan when it affirmed the district court’s ruling, including its holding

that a second majority-Black district would likely be

necessary to remedy the Section 2 violation. See id. at

42; see also Allen v. Milligan, 144 S. Ct. 476, 476 (2023)

(mem.) (denying Alabama’s application to stay an injunction barring the state from conducting elections

under a remedial map that did not include a second

majority-Black district). Courts have continued to do

so in the years since Milligan. See, e.g., Nairne v.

Landry, -- F.4th --, 2025 WL 2355524, at *1 (5th Cir.

Aug. 14, 2025); White v. State Bd. of Election Comm’rs,

No. 22-cv-62, 2025 WL 2406437, at *54 (N.D. Miss.

Aug. 19, 2025); Singleton v. Allen, Nos. 21-cv-1291, 21cv-1530, 2025 WL 1342947, at *4 (N.D. Ala. May 8,

2025). And significantly, over the nearly four decades

during which courts have applied Gingles, “Congress

and the President have not disturbed Gingles, even as

they have made other changes to the Voting Rights

Act.” Milligan, 599 U.S. at 42 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).

In sum, Section 2 is a vital tool for fulfilling the

Fifteenth Amendment’s promise of a multiracial democracy free from discrimination. And for Section 2 to

have any force when applied to redistricting, race must

be taken into account to ensure that voters of color

have an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their

choice.

III. Race-consciousness Is Baked into the Text

and History of the Fifteenth Amendment.

Appellees contend that the Legislature’s intentional creation of an additional majority-Black district

to comply with the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. The district court agreed and treated the Legislature’s decision to draw such a district as virtually

decisive evidence of racial predominance under the

Fourteenth Amendment. See J.S. App. 174a. In the

view of the district court, the consideration of race that

is required to comply with Voting Rights Act, particularly when a legislature acts to remedy a Section 2 violation, constitutes racial predominance.

Appellees’ insistence on race-blind districting cannot be squared with this Court’s precedents, Milligan,

599 U.S. at 41 (“we are not persuaded by Alabama’s

arguments that § 2 as interpreted in Gingles exceeds

the remedial authority of Congress,” including when

Gingles “authorize[s] race-based redistricting as a

remedy” for Section 2 violations), or the text and history of the Fifteenth Amendment. Those who wrote

and ratified the Fifteenth Amendment did not view the

world through rose-tinted, colorblind glasses. They

confronted a political system sharply divided along racial lines, and they viewed the Fifteenth Amendment’s

guarantee of equal political opportunity as an essential “bulwark of liberty” that would enable Black people “to protect themselves in the southern reconstructed States.” Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 3d. Sess.

983, 1008 (1869). The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote free from racial discrimination

not only because the right to participate in the political

process was a matter of basic liberty, dignity, and selfgovernance, see id. at app. 95 (“It is absurd to speak of

self-government as belonging to one who is denied the

ballot, for without the ballot no man governs himself.”), but also because “[B]lack people needed the

right to vote in order to be able to protect themselves

against the enactment of pernicious laws by white

southerners,” Amar & Brownstein, supra, at 939.

Without the equal right to vote, Black citizens would

be “without . . . power” and “in constant danger from

the cupidity of men who have been and expect again to

be his masters.” Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 3d Sess. 983

(1869). Race mattered in politics and that made the

right to vote essential.

The Fifteenth Amendment gave Congress a broad

enforcement power precisely because of the reality of

an electoral system divided along racial lines. The

Amendment’s Framers recognized that congressional

enforcement was vital to “neutralize the deep-rooted

prejudice of the white race there against the negro”

and “secure his dearest privileges” at the ballot box.

Id. at app. 392. And they understood that the persistence of racially polarized voting would “provide an incentive for intentional discrimination in the regulation

of elections.” N.C. State Conf. of NAACP v. McCrory,

831 F.3d 204, 222 (4th Cir. 2016). In this respect, raceconsciousness is baked into the text and history of the

Fifteenth Amendment.

Congress’s broad power to enforce the Fifteenth

Amendment plainly allows Congress to require states

to take race and the continuing persistence of racially

polarized voting into account to ensure that citizens of

color, like their white counterparts, can participate in

the political process and elect representatives of their

choice. Neither Congress nor states need turn a blind

eye to the fact that “racial discrimination and racially

polarized voting are not ancient history.” Bartlett v.

Strickland, 556 U.S. 1, 25 (2009).

Nothing in the text and history of the Fifteenth

Amendment supports the assertion that states must

be blind to race and cannot intentionally create a majority-minority district when such a district is necessary to comply with the Voting Rights Act. Indeed,

color-blindness arguments were invoked to oppose the

Fifteenth Amendment and prevent congressional efforts to enforce it. States opposed ratification of the

Fifteenth Amendment on the ground that it “single[d]

out the colored races as its especial wards and favorites.” Tenn. House J. 185-88 (1869-70), in 2 The Reconstruction Amendments, supra, at 579.

After ratification, opponents of the Fifteenth

Amendment claimed that enforcement legislation,

such as the Enforcement Act of 1870, that sought to

prevent efforts to intimidate and hinder Black citizens

from voting was a form of “class legislation against the

great white race to which we all belong.” Cong. Globe,

41st Cong., 2d Sess. 3874 (1870). Democratic opponents of congressional efforts to ensure that the right

to vote was actually enjoyed by persons “to whom the

right of suffrage is secured or guaranteed by the fifteenth amendment,” see Act of May 31, 1870, ch. 114,

§ 5, 16 Stat. 140, 141, insisted that providing safeguards to ensure that Black citizens could exercise

their right to vote “discriminate[d] in favor of the black

and against the white” in violation of the Fifteenth

Amendment. Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 2d Sess. app.

400 (1870). Opponents decried enforcement efforts as

“giv[ing] the negro rights, safeguards, and remedies

which are withheld from the white man.” Id. at 3874.

For the Reconstruction Framers, the Fifteenth

Amendment’s touchstone was empowering Black voters to ensure equal political opportunities, not the

colorblind notion that race could not be considered. As

the debates over the Enforcement Act of 1870 reflect,

nothing in the Fifteenth Amendment requires Congress or states to ignore the “deep rooted prejudice of

the white race there against the negro” in securing to

Black citizens their “just and constitutional position”

as equal citizens. Id. at app. 392-93. In enforcing the

Fifteenth Amendment, Congress can require states to

take account of race and how our political system remains divided along racial lines in order to ensure that

Black, as well as white, citizens can enjoy the Fifteenth Amendment’s promise of equal political opportunity. That, as Representative Washington Townsend observed, “does not elevate one race above another; it gives no exclusive privileges, but in obedience

to the Constitution it secures equality under the Constitution to all.” Id. at app. 393.

Louisiana’s 2022 congressional map packed and

cracked communities of color to minimize Black voting

strength and to nullify the effectiveness of their votes.

If this Court were to accept Appellees’ claim that, after

three federal courts concluded that the map likely violated the Voting Rights Act, the state could not revise

its map to create a second district in which Black voters could elect representatives of their choice, it would

license the kind of gerrymandering that state mapmakers have long employed to dilute Black voting

strength and would turn the Fifteenth Amendment on

its head.

The Voting Rights Act helps enforce the Fifteenth

Amendment’s guarantee of equality by ensuring that

Black citizens, like their white counterparts, can participate in the political process as equals and elect representatives of their choice. See United States v. Marengo Cnty. Comm’n, 731 F.2d 1546, 1561 (11th Cir.

1984) (“Section 2 is not meant to create race-conscious

voting but to attack the discriminatory results of such

voting where it is present.”). The race-consciousness

required to create majority-minority districts that ensure equal political opportunity under the Voting

Rights Act raises no constitutional concern.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, this Court should reverse the judgment of the court below.

Respectfully submitted,

ELIZABETH B. WYDRA

BRIANNE J. GOROD*

DAVID H. GANS

ANNA K. JESSURUN

CONSTITUTIONAL

ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER

1730 Rhode Island Ave. NW

Suite 1200

Washington, D.C. 20036

(202) 296-6889

brianne@theusconstitution.org

Counsel for Amicus Curiae

September 3, 2025

* Counsel of Record

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.