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

Supreme Court briefSep 3, 2025

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Nos. 24-109 and 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

_________

BRIEF OF LOUISIANA MATHEMATICS AND

COMPUTER-SCIENCE PROFESSORS

AS AMICI CURIAE

IN SUPPORT OF NEITHER PARTY

_________

JUDY Y. BARRASSO

MITHUN B. KAMATH

BARRASSO USDIN

KUPPERMAN FREEMAN &

SARVER, LLC

909 Poydras Street

Suite 2350

New Orleans, LA 70112

(504) 589-9700

SAM HIRSCH

Counsel of Record

JESSICA RING AMUNSON

ARJUN R. RAMAMURTI

SOPHIA W. MONTGOMERY

JENNER & BLOCK LLP

1099 New York Avenue NW

Suite 900

Washington, DC 20001

(202) 639-6000

shirsch@jenner.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE .................................. 1

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT ......................................... 3

ARGUMENT ....................................................................... 6

I. The State of Louisiana Can Successfully

Navigate the Competing Imperatives of

the Voting Rights Act and the

Constitution. ............................................................. 6

A. The Amicus Map Complies with

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. ................ 7

B. The Amicus Map Complies with the

Constitution. ..................................................... 17

II. The Voting Rights Act Does Not Require

“Majority-Minority” or “Majority-Black”

Remedial Districts. ............................................... 23

III. The Court Should Neither Invalidate

Section 2 as Applied to Louisiana Nor Hold

that Louisiana Lacks a Compelling

Interest

Voting

Rights

Act

Compliance. ............................................................ 28

CONCLUSION ................................................................. 35

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES

CASES

Abbott v. Perez, 585 U.S. 579 (2018) ....................... 3, 24

Allen v. Milligan, 599 U.S. 1 (2023) ...... 8, 9, 16, 22, 25,

27, 29, 31, 32

Bartlett v. Strickland, 556 U.S. 1 (2009)...16, 18, 26-28

Cooper v. Harris, 581 U.S. 285 (2017) ...... 16, 17, 22, 34

Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461 (2003) ................... 27

Growe v. Emison, 507 U.S. 25 (1993) ................... 25, 28

Harris

Arizona

Independent

Redistricting Commission, 578 U.S. 253

(2016) ....................................................................... 33

Johnson v. De Grandy, 512 U.S. 997 (1994) .... 9, 15, 17

League of United Latin American Citizens

v. Perry, 548 U.S. 399 (2006) ....................... 6, 16, 33

Major v. Treen, 574 F. Supp. 325 (E.D. La.

1983) .......................................................................... 20

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137

(1803) .......................................................................... 3

Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900 (1995) ........................ 4

Mississippi

Republican

Executive

Committee v. Brooks, 469 U.S. 1002

(1984) ........................................................................ 29

Nairne v. Ardoin, 715 F. Supp. 3d 808 (M.D.

La. 2024) .................................................................. 31

iii

Nairne v. Landry, No. 24-30115, 2025 WL

2355524 (5th Cir. Aug. 14, 2025) ......................31-33

Petteway v. Galveston County, 111 F.4th

596 (5th Cir. 2024) ................................................... 27

Robinson v. Ardoin, 605 F. Supp. 3d 759

(M.D. La. 2022) .................................. 2, 23, 30, 31, 33

Robinson v. Ardoin, 37 F.4th 208 (5th Cir.

2022) .............................................................. 16, 23, 33

Robinson v. Ardoin, 86 F.4th 574 (5th Cir.

2023) .......................................................................... 33

Robinson v. Callais, 144 S. Ct. 1171 (2024) ................ 2

Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899 (1996) ............................. 16

Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 (1993)........................ 27, 32

Singleton v. Allen, No. 2:21-cv-1291, 2023

WL 6567895 (N.D. Ala. Oct. 5, 2023) .............. 16, 25

South Carolina v. Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301

(1966) .......................................................................... 8

Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v.

President & Fellows of Harvard College,

600 U.S. 181 (2023) ...................................... 29, 31, 32

Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986) ........ 9, 22, 25

United States v. Brown, 561 F.3d 420 (5th

Cir. 2009) .................................................................. 24

Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146 (1993) .................. 24

Walen v. Burgum, 145 S. Ct. 1041 (2025) .................. 34

Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin

Elections Commission, 595 U.S. 398

(2022) ........................................................................ 33

CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS AND STATUTES

U.S. CONST. art. VI, cl. 2.............................................. 32

U.S. CONST. amend. XIV ........................................... 2, 3

U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 5 ...................................... 31

U.S. CONST. amend. XV ..................................... 2, 32, 33

U.S. CONST. amend. XV, § 2 ........................................ 31

52 U.S.C. § 10301 ..............................1, 3-7, 9, 17, 23, 24,

26-30, 32, 34, 35

52 U.S.C. § 10301(a) .............................................. 5, 7, 24

52 U.S.C. § 10301(b).........................4-7, 9, 17, 24, 30, 34

52 U.S.C. § 10304 .......................................................... 33

LA. CONST. art. I, § 3 .................................................... 23

LEGISLATIVE MATERIALS

Louisiana Joint Rule No. 21, H.R. Con. Res.

90, 2021 Reg. Sess. (La. effective June

11, 2021) .................................................................... 20

OTHER AUTHORITIES

Jessica Ring Amunson, Amariah Becker,

Dara Gold, Sam Hirsch & Arjun

Ramamurti, The Promise of Computational Redistricting: A Practical

Guide to Un-Gerrymandering, 60 WAKE

FOREST L. REV. (forthcoming 2024–

2025) .......................................................................... 19

Stephen Ansolabehere, Nathaniel Persily,

& Charles Stewart III, Regional

Differences in Racial Polarization in

the

2012

Presidential

Election:

Implications for the Constitutionality of

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 126

HARV. L. REV. FORUM 205 (2013) .......................... 8

Amariah Becker, Moon Duchin, Dara Gold

Sam

Hirsch,

Computational

Redistricting and the Voting Rights Act,

20 ELECTION L.J. 407 (2021) ................................. 19

Brief of Computational Redistricting

Experts as Amici Curiae, Allen v.

Milligan, 599 U.S. 1 (2023) (Nos. 211086, 21-1087), 2022 WL 2873387.......................... 19

Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School,

RPV Near Me, RPVnearme.org (last

visited Sept. 2, 2025)................................................. 8

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE1

Amici curiae Michael Mislove, Lisa J. Fauci, and

Nicholas Mattei are professors of mathematics and

computer science at Tulane University in Louisiana.

Amici have an interest in showing that computational

redistricting—using algorithms to help draw maps that

attempt to optimize multiple districting criteria—can

produce a congressional plan for Louisiana that fully

remedies any violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights

Act of 1965 (VRA) while simultaneously complying with

the United States Constitution, other legal

requirements, and traditional districting criteria—all

without unduly elevating race in redistricting. Amici

and their team of computational-redistricting experts

created an “Amicus Map” that achieves this result by

including two districts (one based in New Orleans, the

other in Baton Rouge) where black voters would have

the opportunity to elect Representatives of their choice

to Congress, although neither district is literally,

mathematically majority-black.

On three occasions in 2022, the district court in

Robinson v. Ardoin granted amici leave to file briefs in

support of neither party about the Amicus Map.2 In

preliminarily enjoining the State’s prior congressional

map (the “2022 Plan”), the Robinson court identified the

Amicus Map as one of several that “could provide a

No counsel for a party authored this brief in whole or in part, and

no person or entity other than amici or their counsel made a

monetary contribution to this brief’s preparation or submission.

See Robinson v. Ardoin, M.D. La. No. 3:22-cv-211, Docs. 74, 96, 97,

194, 210, 220, 277, 284, 285.

starting point” for the Legislature’s remedial

mapmaking. Robinson v. Ardoin, 605 F. Supp. 3d 759,

856 & n.441 (M.D. La. 2022). But the court also ordered

the Legislature to enact a remedial plan that included

two “majority-Black congressional district[s],” id. at 766,

and none of the Amicus Map’s districts is majorityblack.

The Legislature eventually followed the Robinson

court’s directive and enacted the 2024 Plan—a map with

two majority-black districts that is now the subject of

this litigation. After the court below invalidated the

2024 Plan on the ground that its District 6 was an

unconstitutional racial gerrymander, amici were

granted leave to participate in the remedial proceedings

by again offering the same Amicus Map.3 Before amici

could present their Map, this Court stayed those

remedial proceedings, Robinson v. Callais, 144 S. Ct.

1171 (2024), with Justice Jackson noting that, absent the

stay, the district court might have “selected a remedial

map … that complies with both §2 and the Equal

Protection Clause,” id. at 1173 n.1 (dissenting opinion).

In this Court, amici again file in support of neither

party. Amici focus solely on the “question raised on

pages 36–38 of the Brief for Appellees: Whether the

State’s intentional creation of a second majorityminority congressional district violates the Fourteenth

or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

Court’s August 1st Order; see Br. for Appellees 36, 38

(arguing that the State “lacks a compelling interest in

See Callais v. Landry, W.D. La. No. 3:24-cv-122, Docs. 206, 206-1,

207, 211, 212.

VRA compliance” because Section 2 is no longer

constitutional as applied to Louisiana, since black voters

have “dispers[ed] across the State, propelled by social

advancements, including integration”); see also id. at 1

(“VRA Section 2 … cannot constitutionally apply to

today’s Louisiana.”).

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT

No doubt, a statute demanding the consideration of

race can conflict with a constitutional provision

restricting the consideration of race. And no doubt,

when such conflicts arise, the statute must give way, and

the Constitution must prevail. See Marbury v. Madison,

5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 178 (1803).

In the context of redistricting, it is widely believed

that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the Equal

Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment

routinely conflict, making it nearly impossible for States

to navigate these “competing hazards of liability.”

Abbott v. Perez, 585 U.S. 579, 587 (2018) (quotation

marks omitted).

But that belief is overblown

generally—and is palpably untrue here, in the context of

congressional redistricting in present-day Louisiana.

This Court can resolve much of the perceived conflict

between Section 2 and the Equal Protection Clause by

clarifying that Section 2 requires opportunity districts—

that is, districts in which a particular group has the

potential to elect its preferred candidates to office—not

majority-minority or majority-black districts. And

then, applying Section 2 as properly interpreted, the

Court should neither invalidate Section 2 as applied to

Louisiana nor hold that Louisiana lacks a compelling

interest in VRA compliance.

First, Louisiana can successfully navigate the

competing imperatives of the VRA and the Constitution.

A congressional plan like the Amicus Map would afford

substantially equal electoral opportunity to citizens of all

races while avoiding excessive consideration of race. On

the one hand, the Amicus Map provides black citizens

and white citizens alike with substantially equal

“opportunit[ies] … to participate in the political process

and to elect representatives of their choice,” and thus

complies with Section 2 of the VRA. 52 U.S.C.

§ 10301(b). On the other hand, the Amicus Map complies

with the Constitution because race was not “the

predominant factor motivating the [mapmaker’s]

decision to place a significant number of voters within or

without a[ny] particular district,” Miller v. Johnson, 515

U.S. 900, 916 (1995), and thus race did not subordinate

the State’s traditional districting criteria, including

compactness, contiguity, and respect for parishes

(Louisiana’s equivalent of counties), municipalities,

precincts, and communities of interest. And the Amicus

Map accomplished all of this while fully protecting the

reelection prospects of powerful members of the State’s

congressional delegation. The very existence of the

Amicus Map conclusively refutes any notion that

redistricting in Louisiana triggers an ineluctable clash

between Section 2 and the Constitution.

Second, the Court should take this opportunity to

clarify that Section 2—construed strictly in accord with

its plain text—does not require remedies that violate the

Fourteenth Amendment. Potential conflicts with the

Constitution typically will dissolve when a map focuses

on electoral opportunity rather than demographic

targets, because a focus on electoral opportunity avoids

the harms associated with race-based redistricting. Cf.

Louisiana Supp. Br. 6–17 (listing these harms). Where

conflict between the statute and the Constitution seems

irreconcilable, it is because Section 2 has been

interpreted in a manner unfaithful to the VRA’s plain

text.

For example, Section 2 is frequently misread to

suggest that it protects only “minority” voters, when in

fact it applies universally, expressly according the same

protection from discrimination in voting to all “citizen[s]

of the United States.” 52 U.S.C. § 10301(a). And Section

2 cases are frequently misunderstood to turn on the

distinction between districts that are “majority-black”

(or “majority-minority”) and districts that are not, when

in fact the statute expressly distinguishes districts

where members of a racial group have the

“opportunity … to elect representatives of their choice”

from districts where they lack such opportunity. Id.

§ 10301(b). Reinterpreting Section 2 to hew more

closely to its plain text would clearly be preferable to

invalidating the statute.

Third, if faced with the choice between holding that

“Louisiana lacks a compelling interest in VRA

compliance” because Section 2 is no longer constitutional

as applied to Louisiana, see Br. for Appellees 36, or

holding that the 2024 Plan is not narrowly tailored to

achieve the State’s compelling interest in complying

with the VRA because the Legislature considered race

substantially more than was necessary to afford all

“members of the electorate” an equal “opportunity … to

elect representatives of their choice” and thus to comply

with Section 2, 52 U.S.C. § 10301(b), the latter is clearly

more appropriate (though amici take no position on

whether the judgment below should be affirmed).

The Amicus Map shows that harmony between the

plain text of Section 2 and the Reconstruction

Amendments is not simply theoretical but achievable in

practice. Given this, the Court should not hold Section 2

unconstitutional (as applied to Louisiana or otherwise),

nor should it conclude that the State of Louisiana lacked

a compelling interest in complying with Section 2 as

properly interpreted.

ARGUMENT

I. The State of Louisiana Can Successfully Navigate

the Competing Imperatives of the Voting Rights

Act and the Constitution.

Critics of this Court’s Section 2 jurisprudence

sometimes assert that States cannot successfully

navigate the competing imperatives of the VRA and the

Constitution. That assertion is exaggerated generally

and is demonstrably wrong as applied to Louisiana

congressional redistricting today, as the Amicus Map

shows.

The Amicus Map complies with Section 2 of the

VRA, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the

U.S. Constitution, and all other federal and state legal

requirements, while fully respecting Louisiana’s

traditional districting criteria. The Map’s very existence

disproves any argument that it is impossible in

Louisiana to walk the line between paying too little

attention to race and violating the VRA and paying too

much attention to race and violating the Constitution.

A. The Amicus Map Complies with Section 2 of

the Voting Rights Act.

Section 2 of the VRA prohibits a State from imposing

or applying a districting plan that “results in …

abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United

States to vote on account of race or color.” 52 U.S.C.

§ 10301(a). A violation “is established if, based on the

totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political

processes leading to nomination or election in the State

… are not equally open to participation by members of a

class of citizens protected by” Section 2 “in that its

members have less opportunity than other members of

the electorate to participate in the political process and

to elect representatives of their choice.” Id. § 10301(b).

The Amicus Map provides substantially equal

electoral opportunities to white voters and nonwhite

voters, and to black voters and nonblack voters—and it

does so without engaging in “race-based redistricting”

that “sort[s] [voters] based on their skin color and then

divv[ies] them up between minority and nonminority

districts.” Louisiana Supp. Br. 10. Louisiana has six

congressional districts, and its adult citizen population is

nearly two-thirds white (as of 2020, about 63%) and

nearly one-third black (about 32%), with other racial

groups being relatively small. As shown below (see infra

pages 12–16), voting in Louisiana today is sharply

polarized by race. Indeed, with the possible exceptions

of Mississippi and Alabama, Louisiana may have the

most racially polarized electorate in the Nation.4 And

this polarization extends to all regions of the State. This

means that in each Louisiana congressional district, in

the vast majority of recent elections, the empirical

evidence shows that the victor is either—in the

shorthand common in such analyses—“white-preferred”

or “black-preferred,” but not both. Cf. Allen v. Milligan,

599 U.S. 1, 22 (2023).

The Amicus Map contains four districts where white

voters are likely to elect to Congress a Representative

of their choice over the opposition of most black voters,

and two districts where black voters are likely to elect

to Congress a Representative of their choice over the

opposition of most white voters. That conclusion rests

on extensive statistical analysis by amici’s expert team.

When analyzing congressional-election voting behavior,

experts typically use statewide elections because they

pit the same two candidates against each other

everywhere in the State. So, for example, in the 2016,

2020, and 2024 general elections, President Trump won

solid majorities of Louisiana’s white vote and carried the

Amicus Map’s Congressional Districts 1, 3, 4, and 5

every time (indeed, always by margins of more than 20

percentage points) while his Democratic opponents won

See Election Law Clinic at Harvard Law School, RPV Near Me,

RPVnearme.org (last visited Sept. 2, 2025); Stephen Ansolabehere,

Nathaniel Persily, & Charles Stewart III, Regional Differences in

Racial Polarization in the 2012 Presidential Election: Implications

for the Constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, 126

HARV. L. REV. FORUM 205, 214 (2013); cf. South Carolina v.

Katzenbach, 383 U.S. 301, 329 (1966).

solid majorities of the black vote and carried the Amicus

Map’s Congressional Districts 2 and 6 every time.

Of course, under the VRA’s plain text and this

Court’s decisions interpreting that text, including the

nearly 40-year-old precedent in Thornburg v. Gingles,

478 U.S. 30 (1986), Section 2 does not mandate a

proportional number of districts for a plaintiff’s racial

group. See 52 U.S.C. § 10301(b) (focusing on “[t]he

extent to which members of a protected class have been

elected to office” but disclaiming any “right to have

members of a protected class elected in numbers equal

to their proportion in the population”); Milligan, 599

U.S. at 43–44 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in part) (citing,

inter alia, Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50). However, given the

Louisiana electorate’s demographics and polarization,

white citizens and black citizens alike would have

substantially

equal

opportunities

elect

representatives of their choice under a congressional

plan like the Amicus Map. See League of United Latin

Am. Citizens v. Perry, 548 U.S. 399, 436–38 (2006)

(LULAC) (assessing rough proportionality on a

statewide, rather than regional, basis); Johnson v. De

Grandy, 512 U.S. 997, 1017–20 (1994) (explaining Section

2’s rough-proportionality defense). There can be no

serious debate on this point: The Amicus Map would

vindicate the federally protected voting rights of

Louisiana’s white and black citizens alike.

Significantly, however, the Amicus Map does not

satisfy the VRA by creating four majority-white

districts and two majority-black districts.5 To the

contrary, it contains zero majority-black districts.

Instead, it contains two districts where Louisiana’s

black voters would have a realistic opportunity to elect

their preferred Representatives to Congress with

limited “crossover” support from other voters. One of

these crossover districts, in greater New Orleans, is less

than 44% black; the other, in greater Baton Rouge, is

less than 46% black. Despite black citizens being

literally outnumbered, both districts have voted (often

by solid margins) for black-preferred candidates who

were losing in statewide elections due to overpowering

white bloc voting. These candidates include President

Barack Obama in 2012, Vice President Kamala Harris in

2020 and 2024, Lieutenant Governor candidate Kip

Holden in 2015, and Secretary of State candidate Gwen

Collins-Greenup in 2018 and 2019—all of whom were

preferred by black voters statewide, in the New Orleans

area, and in the Baton Rouge area.

To the best of amici’s knowledge, their Map is the

only map presented to the court below or to the

Robinson court with two opportunity districts that were

not majority-black. While, as explained below (see infra

As used in this brief, a majority-black district, often drawn using

block- or tract-level demographic data from the federal census, is

one in which more than half the relevant population (such as the

voting-age or citizen voting-age population) is black. By contrast,

an opportunity district, often drawn using precinct-level electoral

data, is one in which a particular racial group has the potential to

elect its preferred candidates to office. A crossover district is an

opportunity district in which the particular group constitutes less

than half the relevant population.

Part I-B), the Amicus Map may represent an especially

attractive balancing of multiple districting criteria,

computational redistricting could readily prove that

there are literally hundreds or thousands of alternative

Louisiana congressional maps that would present

roughly similar characteristics.

Figure One shows the Amicus Map’s six

congressional districts superimposed on Louisiana’s 64

parishes. District 2, based in Louisiana’s largest city,

New Orleans (in Orleans Parish), is shaded green;

District 6, based in Louisiana’s second largest city,

Baton Rouge (in East Baton Rouge Parish, labeled

“EBR”), is shaded blue.

FIGURE ONE: The Amicus Map

The effectiveness of both crossover districts is

evident from the precinct-level results of recent

statewide elections, which have been confirmed as

correlating tightly with Louisiana’s congressionalelection results.6 Focusing on candidates who clearly

were black-preferred and were not fringe candidates,

Table One shows the 19 statewide elections conducted in

See Robinson v. Ardoin, M.D. La. No. 3:22-cv-211, Doc. 97, at 19–

22 (explaining methodology and correlations).

the decade preceding the Map’s creation (2012–2021) in

which one candidate is estimated to have received at

least 85% of the black vote and more than one-third of

the total vote. The elections are listed in order by the

candidate’s estimated level of statewide support from

black voters, starting with President Obama, who was

preferred by more than 95% of all Louisiana black voters

(but only 12% of all Louisiana white voters).

Election

Month and

Year (“p”

= primary

election)

11/12

12/14

11/15

11/19

11/16

12/16

11/19

11/15

11/14p

10/19p

11/20

10/15p

10/19p

12/18

10/19p

11/17

10/19p

10/15p

Office(s)

President/VP

U.S. Senator

Governor

President/VP

U.S. Senator

Sec’y of State

Lt. Governor

U.S. Senator

Governor

President/VP

Sec’y of State

Treasurer

Sec’y of State

Att’y General

Treasurer

Lt. Governor

Sec’y of State

Governor

Candidate(s)

Preferred by

Black Voters

(black

candidates in

italics)

Obama/Biden

Landrieu

J.B. Edwards

Clinton/Kaine

Campbell

Collins-Greenup

Holden

Landrieu

J.B. Edwards

Biden/Harris

Tyson

D. Edwards

Collins-Greenup

Jackson

D. Edwards

Jones

Collins-Greenup

J.B. Edwards

Black

Voters

White

Voters

TABLE ONE

Estimated %

Support for

Candidate(s)

2022 Plan

Districts

Carried by

BlackPreferred

Candidate(s)

2, 3, 4, 5, 6

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

2, 4, 5, 6

2024 Plan

Districts

Carried by

BlackPreferred

Candidate(s)

2, 6

2, 5, 6

2, 6

2, 3, 4, 6

2, 6

2, 4, 5, 6

Amicus Map

Districts

Carried by

BlackPreferred

Candidate(s)

2, 6

2, 4, 5, 6

2, 6

2, 3, 4, 6

2, 6

2, 4, 5, 6

Table One shows that, under Louisiana’s 2022 Plan,

every black-preferred candidate carried the New

Orleans-based District 2; but none of those candidates,

other than Governor John Bel Edwards, carried any of

the other five districts. By contrast, under the Amicus

Map, the black-preferred candidate would have

prevailed not only in the New Orleans-based District 2

in all 19 elections, but also in the Baton Rouge-based

District 6 in 14 of the 19 elections, including the 11

elections in which the candidate attracted the strongest

levels of black support.

The mere fact that black-preferred statewide

candidates have occasionally failed to carry District 6

does not prevent it from fully curing any VRA violation

here. As this Court has explained, “the ultimate right of

§2 is equality of opportunity, not a guarantee of electoral

success.” De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1014 n.11.

Table One also demonstrates one of the two main

reasons why the Amicus Map’s Districts 2 and 6 are

effective for black voters even though the districts are

not majority-black: Although white voters are cohesive

in voting against black-preferred candidates, they are

not as cohesive as black voters in supporting those same

candidates. On average in these contests, black voters

statewide split about 92 to 8 percent, while white voters

split about 85 to 15 percent in the opposite direction.

Beyond this greater cohesion of black voters, there is

also the fact that a majority of Louisiana voters who

identify as neither black nor white, including Latino and

Asian-American citizens, consistently vote for blackpreferred candidates. The latter point is most salient in

the Amicus Map’s New Orleans-based District 2, where

one out of ten registered voters identifies as neither

white nor black.7

Courts have lauded districts like the Amicus Map’s

Districts 2 and 6 because they foster cross-racial

alliances. See, e.g., Cooper v. Harris, 581 U.S. 285, 305

(2017) (explaining that the VRA can “be satisfied by

crossover districts” (emphasis deleted)); Bartlett v.

Strickland, 556 U.S. 1, 23–26 (2009) (plurality opinion)

(encouraging VRA defendants to rely on “crossover

voting patterns and … effective crossover districts,”

which invite the kind of cross-racial cooperation that the

VRA “was passed to foster”); see also Robinson v.

Ardoin, 37 F.4th 208, 227 (5th Cir. 2022) (per curiam)

(“If a minority group can … elect its preferred

candidates, it does not matter whether that ability

accrues in a majority-minority or a performing crossover

district.”); Singleton v. Allen, No. 2:21-cv-1291, 2023 WL

6567895, at *16–17 (N.D. Ala. Oct. 5, 2023) (three-judge

court) (rejecting a majority-black district and instead

choosing a crossover remedial district on remand from

this Court’s decision in Milligan).

The Amicus Map’s Districts 2 and 6 encompass a substantial

majority of the black voters who were found in Robinson to have a

Section 2 right. These two districts are home to all the Robinson

plaintiffs and draw almost 96% of their population from the 14

parishes shared in whole or in part with the Robinson illustrative

plan’s majority-black districts. So the Amicus Map “‘substantially

addresses’” the specific Section 2 violation identified in Robinson.

LULAC, 548 U.S. at 431 (quoting Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899, 918

(1996)).

As this Court noted more than 30 years ago,

“minority voters are not immune from the obligation to

pull, haul, and trade to find common political ground,” as

is required to prevail in crossover districts like those in

the Amicus Map. De Grandy, 512 U.S. at 1020. The

virtue of that obligation “is not to be slighted in applying

a statute meant to hasten the waning of racism in

American politics.” Id.

B. The Amicus

Constitution.

Map

Complies

with

the

Opportunity districts like those in the Amicus Map

also comply fully with the Constitution. It has been

suggested that compliance with Section 2, at least as

applied here, violates the Constitution because it

requires engaging in race-based redistricting that

stereotypes and stigmatizes individuals, balkanizes

citizens into competing racial factions, and forces States

and federal judges to sort voters by race. See Louisiana

Supp. Br. 9–17. But the Amicus Map, with its focus on

electoral opportunity, refutes that view.

As further discussed below, the Amicus Map’s

crossover districts are the product of applying

traditional districting criteria while considering race

only when necessary to afford all members of the

electorate a substantially equal “opportunity … to elect

representatives of their choice.” 52 U.S.C. § 10301(b).

These districts are not the product of intentionally

drawing boundaries to maintain an arbitrary minority

percentage or meet a mechanical “racial target.”

Cooper, 581 U.S. at 299–300. Because they rely on

electoral rather than demographic data, crossover

districts such as these therefore avoid the stereotypical

and stigmatizing assumption that all voters of the same

race share the same political preferences.

Similarly, such districts avoid racial blocs and

balkanization. Indeed, in Bartlett v. Strickland, the

plurality recognized that crossover districts where a

racial group’s adult citizens lack a numerical majority

but nonetheless have the potential to elect

representatives of their choice may be less vulnerable to

claims of racial gerrymandering. See 556 U.S. at 23. And

the plurality specifically recognized that crossover

districts can “diminish the significance and influence of

race by encouraging minority and majority voters to

work together toward a common goal,” leading “to less

racial isolation, not more.” Id.

The Amicus Map’s use of computational redistricting

to pursue equal electoral opportunity avoided excessive

race consciousness by drawing maps based not on race,

but on empirical and verifiable data about voting

behavior. Rather than setting out to create a particular

number of majority-black or majority-minority districts,

or to hit some particular demographic threshold, the

expert team’s optimizing algorithm instead used election

returns to evaluate actual electoral opportunity for

voters of all races. The algorithm did not rely on

generalizations or stereotypes about how “all black

voters” or “all white voters” are expected to vote.

Instead, it used actual data in the form of precinct-byprecinct returns from recent elections to group precincts

together into districts that could then be evaluated as to

whether they would afford all voters equal electoral

opportunity. Racial data was used solely to determine

which candidates in recent elections were preferred by

members of different racial groups; it was not used

simply to decide which voters to place into each district.

Election precincts were assembled into districts based

on their electoral past performance, not their

demographics. Essentially, amici’s expert team was

just trying to solve the mathematical problem of which

combinations of geography produce substantially equal

electoral opportunity. Their redistricting process was

thus based on electoral data, not race.

Through the use of these sophisticated algorithmic

techniques,8 the Amicus Map’s New Orleans-based

District 2 and Baton Rouge-based District 6 achieve

electoral opportunity for black voters without

attempting to hit any demographic threshold or target,

such as being 50% black in voting-age population. Table

Two presents each district’s black population

percentages, which were merely consequences of the

algorithmic technique, not its objective.

For further background on these computational methods, see Br.

of Computational Redistricting Experts as Amici Curiae, Allen v.

Milligan, 599 U.S. 1 (2023) (Nos. 21-1086, 21-1087), 2022 WL

2873387, cited in Milligan, 599 U.S. at 35–37; Amariah Becker,

Moon Duchin, Dara Gold & Sam Hirsch, Computational

Redistricting and the Voting Rights Act, 20 ELECTION L.J. 407

(2021); Jessica Ring Amunson, Amariah Becker, Dara Gold, Sam

Hirsch & Arjun Ramamurti, The Promise of Computational

Redistricting: A Practical Guide to Un-Gerrymandering, 60 WAKE

FOREST L. REV. (forthcoming 2024–2025).

TABLE TWO

Metric for Black

Percentage

Voting-Age Population

(2020)

Registered Voters

(2021)

Total Population

(2020)

Amicus Map

District 2 —

Greater New

Orleans

41.5

Amicus Map

District 6 —

Greater Baton

Rouge

42.9

42.4

44.2

43.8

45.3

Moreover, it is clear that Louisiana’s traditional

districting criteria—not race—predominated in crafting

the Amicus Map generally and Districts 2 and 6

specifically.9 As an initial matter, the color map (see

supra page 12 (Figure One)) demonstrates that all six

districts are visually compact. Moreover, the Amicus

Map and its districts are reasonably configured, as they

excel on multiple traditional districting criteria:

•

Respect for parishes. The Amicus Map splits

only 7 of Louisiana’s 64 parishes. And no parish

is split across three or more districts.

•

Respect for municipalities. The Amicus Map

splits only 6 of Louisiana’s 304 municipalities

(cities, towns, and villages). Four of those six

See Louisiana Joint Rule No. 21, H.R. Con. Res. 90, 2021 Reg. Sess.

(La. effective June 11, 2021) (listing Louisiana’s districting criteria);

see also Major v. Treen, 574 F. Supp. 325, 330–31 (E.D. La. 1983)

(three-judge court) (similar).

splits follow parish lines. And no municipality is

split across three or more districts.

•

Respect for larger cities. The Amicus Map

keeps fully intact every Louisiana city with more

than 20,000 residents, including New Orleans,

Baton Rouge, Shreveport, Lafayette, Lake

Charles, Kenner, Bossier City, Monroe, and

Alexandria.

•

Respect for communities of interest. The

Amicus Map’s District 2 is located entirely within

the official New Orleans metropolitan statistical

area (MSA). The Map’s District 6 contains nearly

the entire Baton Rouge MSA. And the MSAs of

Lafayette, Bossier City, Monroe, and Alexandria

are kept fully intact in Districts 3, 4, 5, and 5,

respectively.

•

Compactness. The Amicus Map’s six districts

are compact not only visually, but also by

standard mathematical measures such as PolsbyPopper, Reock, and Convex Hull scores.

•

Contiguity. The Amicus Map’s districts are

composed of contiguous territory.

•

Whole precincts. The Amicus Map keeps intact

every one of Louisiana’s 3,000-plus precincts from

the 2022 election.

•

Population equality. The Amicus Map has a

lower

population

deviation

than

any

congressional plan in Louisiana history.

Although the Amicus Map was created in 2022 for

presentation to the Robinson court, it also satisfies the

political criteria that the Governor and leaders of the

Louisiana Legislature articulated in 2024. Each member

of Louisiana’s congressional delegation resides in a

separate district in the Amicus Map, so no election

would pit a pair of Members of Congress against each

other. And the reelection prospects of House Speaker

Mike Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise,

House Appropriations Committee member Julia Letlow,

and other powerful members of the State’s congressional

delegation would be well protected under the Amicus

Map. (For example, in November 2024, President

Trump received more than 63% of the vote in all three of

those Members’ districts.)11

For details on the Amicus Map’s adherence to these criteria, with

favorable comparisons to the Legislature’s 2022 and 2024

congressional maps, see Callais v. Landry, W.D. La. No. 3:24-cv122, Doc. 212, at 2, 9–11, 17–26, A-1 to A-5 (May 6, 2024). Those

comparisons show that the Amicus Map’s districts, including its two

crossover districts, respect “traditional districting criteria such as

[parish], city, and town lines” “at least as well as [Louisiana’s]

redistricting plan[s],” clearly qualify as “geographically compact”

and “reasonably configured,” and thus should satisfy Gingles’s

exacting compactness requirement. Milligan, 599 U.S. at 43–44 &

n.2 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in part) (citing, inter alia, Cooper,

581 U.S. at 301–02; Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50 (internal quotation marks

omitted)).

The Amicus Map’s Baton Rouge-based District 6 is a potentially

competitive one that neither political party could take for granted,

To summarize: The Amicus Map complies with any

reasonable interpretation of Section 2 of the VRA. It

complies with the U.S. Constitution. And it complies

with all other legal requirements, as well as with

Louisiana’s traditional districting criteria. Thus, the

Amicus Map demonstrates convincingly that, at least in

Louisiana, any conflict between Section 2 and the

Constitution is by no means intractable.

II. The Voting Rights Act Does Not Require

“Majority-Minority”

“Majority-Black”

Remedial Districts.

As the Amicus Map demonstrates, the creation of

majority-minority districts is not always required when

remedying a Section 2 violation.

However, the

Louisiana Legislature confronted the Robinson courts’

mandate to create two literally “majority-black”

districts. See Robinson, 605 F. Supp. 3d at 766 (ordering

a remedial plan with “an additional majority-Black

congressional district”); Robinson, 37 F.4th at 215

(describing the district court’s order as “requir[ing] the

Louisiana Legislature to enact a new congressional map

with a second black-majority district”). And the

Robinson courts in turn rested their mandates on this

although a Democrat certainly would be favored there. The

congressional delegation thus would likely have four Republicans

and two Democrats. In a State where the last five Republican

presidential candidates all received between 57 and 61 percent of

the total vote and their Democratic counterparts all received

between 38 and 41 percent, no one could credibly claim that the

Amicus Map violates the state constitutional prohibition against

arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable discrimination based on

“political ideas or affiliations.” LA. CONST. art. I, § 3.

Court’s frequent invocation of “majority-minority” or

“majority-black” districts when discussing Section 2. It

is now time to retire that terminology, for three reasons.

1. This language has no basis in Section 2’s plain

text. The word “minority” can be confusing or even

inaccurate here. Section 2 does not single out black

citizens or white citizens. It equally protects members

of any class of “United States citizen[s]” defined by

“race or color.” 52 U.S.C. § 10301(a); see id. § 10301(b);

see also United States v. Brown, 561 F.3d 420, 424, 430,

435 (5th Cir. 2009) (holding defendants liable for diluting

white citizens’ voting strength under Section 2).

Furthermore, Section 2 does not speak about, or

draw distinctions based on, whether black citizens or

white citizens or “members of a[ny] protected class”

constitute a mathematical majority in any particular

jurisdiction or district. 52 U.S.C. § 10301(b). Section 2

“says nothing about majority-minority districts.”

Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146, 155 (1993). Rather,

the distinction drawn by Section 2’s plain text is between

districts where members of a plaintiff’s racial group

have the “opportunity … to elect representatives of

their choice” and districts where they lack such

opportunity. 52 U.S.C. § 10301(b). Congress could have

added, after “representatives of their choice,” the words

“in districts where they constitute at least 50 percent of

the citizens of voting age.” But it chose not to do so.

Rather than fixating on “majority-minority”

districts, this Court should echo the language of the

statute by referring to “opportunity districts.” See, e.g.,

Abbott, 585 U.S. at 587 (“[U]nder certain circumstances,

States must draw ‘opportunity’ districts in which

minority groups form ‘effective majorities.’” (alteration

and citation omitted)). A black opportunity district can,

for example, be either a majority-black district or a

majority-nonblack district, so long as the district’s black

voters have a realistic opportunity to elect their

preferred candidates. See Milligan, 599 U.S. at 18

(asking whether a district provides plaintiff’s group “the

potential to elect a representative of its own choice”

(quoting Growe v. Emison, 507 U.S. 25, 40 (1993))).

2. After conducting “‘an intensely local appraisal’

[and] a ‘searching practical evaluation of the past and

present reality,’” Milligan, 599 U.S. at 19 (quoting

Gingles, 478 U.S. at 79), experts and courts alike

typically find the 50% mark to be irrelevant. See, e.g.,

Singleton, 2023 WL 6567895, at *16–17. In certain parts

of Louisiana, as the Amicus Map demonstrates, districts

well shy of 50% may suffice to create the potential for

black voters to elect their preferred representatives. In

other places—for example, where voting is also

polarized but (unlike Louisiana) nonblack voters are

more cohesive than black voters—districts might need

to be well above 50% black to create a potential to elect

black voters’ preferred candidates.

What matters empirically, and what should matter

legally, is whether a district actually affords the group

electoral opportunity, not the percentage of the district

comprised by members of the group. An intensely local

appraisal of this question is based on actual electoral

data about how actual voters in actual precincts cast

their ballots in actual elections, not on stereotypes that

simply lump voters together based on race.

3. Although in many instances this Court’s use of

the terms “majority-minority” and “majority-black” is

merely a matter of convenience, it sometimes has harsh

doctrinal consequences, needlessly injecting racial

headcounts into Section 2 jurisprudence. The starkest

example of this problem is the Court’s decision in

Bartlett v. Strickland. While, as noted above (see supra

pages 16, 18), the Bartlett plurality opinion encouraged

States to cure or forestall Section 2 liability by creating

crossover districts, Bartlett’s holding pushed in the

exact opposite direction by establishing what the

plurality called “the majority-minority rule.” 556 U.S. at

17–23 (plurality opinion); see id. at 19–20 (“[A] party

asserting §2 liability must show by a preponderance of

the evidence that the minority population in the

potential election district is greater than 50 percent.”).

Under that rule, plaintiffs cannot come into court and

claim a Section 2 violation by proffering an illustrative

plan with a 49.999% black district. The plaintiffs will

automatically lose unless they find a way to capture

more black residents within the district’s perimeter and

bump that figure up to 50.001%. See id. at 12–26.

Whether in this case or in some future one, this Court

should revisit Bartlett’s holding and shift away from the

“majority-minority rule.” Section 2’s plain text speaks

to the opportunity to elect candidates of choice, not to

pure demographics. Bartlett’s fixation on the 50% mark

injected into Section 2 litigation a racial quota, plain and

simple. Moreover, it is a quota rooted in a racial

stereotype hypothesizing that, when presented the

choice, all black voters will cast their ballots in lockstep

for their preferred candidates and all white voters will

do likewise for those candidates’ opponents. It is

impermissible for States or federal courts to invoke that

racial stereotype because it wrongly assumes that

voters from “the same racial group—regardless of their

age, education, economic status, or the community in

which they live—think alike, share the same political

interests, and will prefer the same candidates at the

polls.” Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630, 647 (1993). And, as

shown above (see supra pages 12–16 and Table One),

such total polarization is not the empirical reality in

Louisiana today, if it ever was.

Reversing the path taken in Bartlett would have the

ancillary benefit of removing some of the thornier

questions from Section 2 case law: Does the 50% rule

refer to total population, voting-age population, or

citizen voting-age population? Compare Bartlett, 556

U.S. at 19–20, 23 (plurality opinion) (population), with id.

at 6–9, 12–14, 18–20 (voting-age population), with id. at 9

(citizen voting-age population). When applying the 50%

rule, should people who self-identified on census forms

as multiracial count as black, white, neither, or both? See

Georgia v. Ashcroft, 539 U.S. 461, 473 & n.1 (2003).

When, if ever, can the 50% rule be satisfied by combining

two or more distinct groups? See Petteway v. Galveston

Cnty., 111 F.4th 596, 599–614 (5th Cir. 2024) (en banc)

(rejecting a coalition of black and Hispanic citizens under

Section 2 despite statistical evidence of cohesive voting).

And an issue that recently splintered this Court: When

does drawing an illustrative district to satisfy Bartlett’s

50% rule render that district too race-conscious?

Compare Milligan, 599 U.S. at 30–33 (plurality opinion),

with id. at 42, 45 (Kavanaugh, J. concurring in part). All

these issues would largely or entirely disappear if the

Court overruled Bartlett and instead reinterpreted

Section 2 in accord with its plain text.

The Bartlett plurality offered no principled basis for

simultaneously encouraging Section 2 defendants to

draw crossover districts and prohibiting Section 2

plaintiffs from proposing them when bringing a claim.

See Bartlett, 556 U.S. at 43–44 (Souter, J., dissenting).12

Justice Scalia had it right when he explained that

establishing whether a Section 2 violation has occurred

should “require[] application of the same standard that

measures whether a §2 violation has been remedied.”

Growe v. Emison, 507 U.S. 25, 38 n.4 (1993).

III. The Court Should Neither Invalidate Section 2 as

Applied to Louisiana Nor Hold that Louisiana

Lacks a Compelling Interest in Voting Rights Act

Compliance.

Appellees, now joined by the State, contend that

Section 2 is no longer constitutional as applied to

Louisiana, that Section 2 compliance is not a compelling

state interest, and that this Court should affirm the

judgment below on the ground that the State engaged in

predominantly racial redistricting without a compelling

As Justice Souter explained in his Bartlett dissent: “The plurality

cannot have it both ways. If voluntarily drawing a crossover district

brings a State into compliance with §2, then requiring creation of a

crossover district must be a way to remedy a violation of §2, and

eliminating a crossover district must in some cases take a State out

of compliance with the statute. And when the elimination of a

crossover district does cause a violation of §2, I cannot fathom why

a voter in that district should not be able to bring a claim to remedy

it.” Id.

interest. See Br. for Appellees 36–38. Each contention

should be rejected.

1. This Court long ago rejected the argument that

Section 2 exceeds the power vested in Congress by the

Fifteenth Amendment, see Miss. Republican Exec.

Comm. v. Brooks, 469 U.S. 1002 (1984), and current

conditions have not subsequently rendered Section 2

invalid as applied to Louisiana or otherwise. As this

Court made clear just three Terms ago, Section 2

liability rests on the combination of “residential

segregation” and significant “racially polarized voting,”

“arising against the backdrop of substantial … racially

discriminatory actions taken by the State.” Milligan,

599 U.S. at 18–19, 22, 25–26, 28–29. Section 2 does not

assume the existence of these conditions. Plaintiffs

must prove them.

At some point, racial progress in a given State may

leave Section 2 plaintiffs unable to prove those

conditions, so their claims will systematically fail. Thus,

Congress built into Section 2 its own “logical end point.”

Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. President &

Fellows of Harvard Coll., 600 U.S. 181, 212, 221 (2023)

(SFFA) (citation omitted). Amici cannot speak to

whether some States may have already reached that end

point. But Louisiana certainly has not. That much is

clear from the facts already established by amici’s

expert team and from the evidence adduced by the

Robinson plaintiffs.

There may eventually come a day when housing

throughout Louisiana is sufficiently racially integrated

that all its precincts will have roughly similar

demographics.

At that point, no plaintiff could

successfully challenge a congressional map under

Section 2. But the Amicus Map, the seven illustrative

plans presented by plaintiffs in Robinson, and the 2022

and 2024 Plans enacted by the Legislature demonstrate

conclusively that Louisiana is not yet at the point where

residential integration has rendered Section 2

irrelevant. See Robinson, 605 F. Supp. 3d at 784 (finding

that “housing segregation … still prevails” in Louisiana).

There may eventually come a day when racially

polarized voting ceases in Louisiana. When members of

a plaintiff’s racial group and “other members of the

electorate” both support the same candidates—that is,

the “representatives of their choice” are identical—

those candidates will always win office, and plaintiffs’

claims of injury will be readily dismissed. 52 U.S.C.

§ 10301(b). But that is not yet a reality in Louisiana, as

typically less than 20% of white voters support the

candidates overwhelmingly preferred by black voters in

recent elections. See supra page 14 (Table One).

Likewise, the Robinson court found extensive evidence

of significant black political cohesion and white bloc

voting. See Robinson, 605 F. Supp. 3d at 839–45. This

polarization explains why no black candidate has been

elected to statewide office in Louisiana since

Reconstruction, and only one black-preferred candidate

(Governor John Bel Edwards) has been elected

statewide in at least the last decade and a half. See id. at

845; see also supra page 14 (Table One).

There may eventually come a day when residential

segregation and polarized voting can no longer be traced

to official acts of racial discrimination taken by the State,

calling into question whether Section 2 remains

“appropriate legislation” to enforce the Reconstruction

Amendments. U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 5; id. amend.

XV, § 2; see Milligan, 599 U.S. at 45 (Kavanaugh, J.,

concurring in part) (referencing a potential “temporal

argument” that the “authority to conduct race-based

redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future”);

SFFA, 600 U.S. at 311 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring)

(“[E]ven if a racial classification is otherwise narrowly

tailored to further a compelling governmental interest,

… [it] must be a temporary matter … [and] must be

limited in time.” (citations and internal quotation marks

omitted)).

But that day also has yet to arrive. As the Robinson

court found: Elections in Louisiana remain polarized by

race more starkly than anywhere else in the Nation,

with the possible exceptions of Mississippi and Alabama;

black voters in Louisiana only rarely enjoy success in

statewide elections, and when their preferred candidate

is black, they never do; racial appeals in political

campaigns persist; and there remains a “long and

ongoing history of voting-related discrimination” that

even Louisiana’s State Senate President and House

Speaker candidly labeled “a ‘sordid history of

discrimination.’” Robinson, 605 F. Supp. 3d at 846, 848;

see also Nairne v. Landry, No. 24-30115, 2025 WL

2355524, at *20 (5th Cir. Aug. 14, 2025) (per curiam)

(describing a record “replete with evidence” of “statesponsored discrimination” against black voters in

Louisiana); Nairne v. Ardoin, 715 F. Supp. 3d 808, 869 &

n.403 (M.D. La. 2024) (noting that “[f]or over 40 years,

Louisiana’s courts have recognized the state’s history of

official discrimination” and its “‘continue[d] … adverse

effect on the ability of its black residents to participate

fully in the political process’” (citation omitted)); cf.

Milligan, 599 U.S. at 22 (describing Alabama in similar

terms).

Louisiana therefore remains today the site of

“intensive racial politics where the excessive role of race

in the electoral process denies [black] voters [an] equal

opportunity to participate” and to elect their preferred

representatives to office. Milligan, 599 U.S. at 30

(brackets and internal quotation marks omitted); see

Nairne, 2025 WL 2355524, at *23 (rejecting the State’s

argument that “conditions in Louisiana no longer justify

race-conscious remedies and that Congress’s Fifteenth

Amendment authority to enact the 1982 amendments to

[Section 2 of] the VRA has expired”). Therefore, the

Court should not declare Section 2 unconstitutional as

applied to Louisiana.

2. Because the Supremacy Clause requires States to

comply with all constitutional exercises of Congress’s

power, see U.S. CONST. art. VI, cl. 2, if this Court

concludes that Section 2 (including its race-conscious

remedies) is constitutionally valid as properly

interpreted and as applied to Louisiana, then it must

conclude that Louisiana can have a compelling

governmental interest in complying with Section 2. See

Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. at 654; see also SFFA, 600 U.S.

at 207. In the current decade, between Robinson and

Nairne, no fewer than ten federal judges have ordered

the State to comply with Section 2 when redistricting.13

That alone supplies plenty enough reason.

This Court should not place Louisiana “in the

impossible position of having to choose between

compliance with [a valid federal antidiscrimination law]

and compliance with the Equal Protection Clause.”

LULAC, 548 U.S. at 518 (Scalia, J., dissenting in

relevant part) (discussing Section 5 of the VRA, 52

U.S.C. § 10304). Justice Scalia—joined by seven other

Members of the Court14—concluded that compliance

with Section 5 of the VRA “can be a compelling state

interest” because this Court had “long ago upheld [its]

constitutionality … as a proper exercise of Congress’s

authority under §2 of the Fifteenth Amendment to

enforce that Amendment’s prohibition on the denial or

abridgment of the right to vote.” Id.; see also Harris v.

Arizona Indep. Redistricting Comm’n, 578 U.S. 253, 258

(2016). Likewise, the Court should now unambiguously

hold that compliance with Section 2 of the same Act can

be a compelling state interest. See Wis. Legislature v.

Wis. Elections Comm’n, 595 U.S. 398, 401 (2022) (per

curiam) (“[O]ur precedents hold that a State can satisfy

strict scrutiny if it proves that its race-based sorting of

voters is narrowly tailored to comply with the VRA.”

See Nairne, 2025 WL 2355524, at *22; Robinson v. Ardoin, 86

F.4th 574, 599 (5th Cir. 2023); Robinson, 37 F.4th at 232; Robinson,

605 F. Supp. 3d at 766.

See id. at 475 n.12 (Stevens, J., joined by Breyer, J., concurring in

relevant part); id. at 483, 485 n.2 (Souter, J., joined by Ginsburg, J.,

concurring in relevant part); id. at 511, 518 (Scalia, J., joined by

Roberts, C.J., and Thomas & Alito, JJ., dissenting in relevant part).

(citing Cooper, 581 U.S. at 292)); see also Walen v.

Burgum, 145 S. Ct. 1041 (2025) (mem.).

3. Amici support neither party in this case and take

no position as to its proper disposition. However, if the

Court decides to affirm the judgment below, it should do

so on the basis that District 6 in the Louisiana

Legislature’s 2024 Plan was not narrowly tailored to

achieve the State’s compelling governmental interest in

complying with Section 2, as properly interpreted,

because the Legislature considered race substantially

more than was necessary to afford all “members of the

electorate” an equal “opportunity … to participate in the

political process and to elect representatives of their

choice.” 52 U.S.C. § 10301(b); see also Cooper, 581 U.S.

at 301–06 (holding that the State’s interest in complying

with the VRA did not justify replacing a successful

crossover district with a majority-black district that was

not narrowly tailored to that objective). The Court

should not affirm on the basis that Louisiana lacked a

compelling interest in complying with a proper

interpretation of the VRA.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, amici respectfully ask this

Court to hold that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act

remains constitutionally valid and that compliance with a

proper interpretation of Section 2 can be a compelling state

interest justifying the intentional creation of a district to

provide voters with equal electoral opportunity.

September 3, 2025

Respectfully submitted,

JUDY Y. BARRASSO

MITHUN B. KAMATH

BARRASSO USDIN

KUPPERMAN FREEMAN &

SARVER, LLC

909 Poydras Street

Suite 2350

New Orleans, LA 70112

(504) 589-9700

SAM HIRSCH

Counsel of Record

JESSICA RING AMUNSON

ARJUN R. RAMAMURTI

SOPHIA W. MONTGOMERY

JENNER & BLOCK LLP

1099 New York Ave., NW

Suite 900

Washington, DC 20001

(202) 639-6000

shirsch@jenner.com

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.