Here we go again—another episode in the never-ending political soap opera called “Redistricting: Now With More Race-Based Headaches.” This time, Louisiana is center stage, caught between a rock and a race card. The Supreme Court is stepping back into the ring to decide whether the state has to keep pretending that voters come in neatly color-coded political boxes.
At the heart of the drama is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a dusty piece of legislative furniture from the civil rights era that’s now being used like a sledgehammer to redraw congressional maps. The theory goes like this: if a state doesn’t carve out enough majority-Black districts, it’s committing racial injustice. Never mind whether the voters actually think alike, vote alike, or even want the same candidates. The assumption is: if your skin is the same color, you must vote the same way. Because, you know, nuance died somewhere around 1986.
Louisiana tried playing nice. After a lawsuit in 2022 demanded more “representation,” the state legislature buckled and tossed together a new map in 2024, adding a second majority-Black district. Cue the next lawsuit—this time from non-Black voters who said, “Hey, wait a second, this is just race-based gerrymandering in reverse.” A three-judge panel agreed, finding the state went too far in letting race drive the bus.
But don’t worry, State Senator Glen Womack swears up and down that it was all about politics, not race. He just wanted to protect the GOP’s A-list cast—House Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and Rep. Julia Letlow. Because nothing screams “colorblind democracy” like drawing maps to protect incumbents. It’s not racial gerrymandering, folks, it’s just your standard-issue political gerrymandering. Totally different flavor of corruption.
And now the Supreme Court is being asked to clean up this mess. Again. Because apparently, nobody can agree on whether drawing districts based on race is a noble civil rights mission or an unconstitutional train wreck.
Even the Justice Department—yes, the one that usually treats Section 2 like it’s the Ten Commandments—is chiming in with a rare moment of clarity. They’re calling out the “misguided” way Section 2 has been twisted into a racial quota system disguised as election law. That’s right, even the DOJ is side-eyeing this nonsense.
Louisiana, for its part, is begging the Court to put an end to the endless litigation treadmill. Because, sure, nothing says “efficient democracy” like spending years and millions of taxpayer dollars arguing over how many Black voters you can cram into District 6 before it becomes unconstitutional.
And let’s be honest here: this entire circus is built on the insulting assumption that all Black voters are interchangeable and will vote Democrat if you just give them their own sandbox. Never mind the explosion of political diversity within minority communities. That kind of complexity doesn’t fit neatly into the redistricting spreadsheet.
Justice Clarence Thomas, as usual, isn’t here for the games. He’s calling it like it is: either the Court admits that race-based redistricting is unconstitutional, or it keeps pretending this is some noble pursuit of equality while actually slicing and dicing voters based on skin color.
And don’t forget Chief Justice John Roberts, who once famously said, “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” That was back in 2006, and not much has changed. Except now, the Court is being asked to rubber-stamp racial sorting in the name of “compliance.”
Here’s the bottom line: the Supreme Court has a choice to make. Will it finally put an end to the make-believe world where race is the only thing that matters on a ballot? Or will it keep letting states play a cynical game of racial musical chairs every ten years?
Either way, Louisiana voters are stuck in the middle, watching their political map turn into a Rorschach test for every judge with a gavel and a grudge.