OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
5:21 PM – Monday, August 18, 2025
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judges rejected Louisiana’s request to enforce its long-stalled Congressional redistricting map — ruling that the plan amounts to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.
A racial gerrymander is a legal challenge grounded in the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Racial gerrymandering occurs when political districts are drawn in a way that segregates voters based on race.
All three judges voted to uphold a lower court’s decision that the map — originally passed by Louisiana’s legislature in 2022 — violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by “diluting the votes” of Black residents.
The three appellate judges, James Dennis (Bill Clinton appointee), Catharina Haynes (George W. Bush appointee), and Irma Ramirez (Joe Biden appointee) upheld a 2024 decision from U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick of the Middle District of Louisiana, the Louisiana Illuminator reported.
The court also affirmed the district court’s finding that the map “‘packs’ Black voters into a small number of majority-Black districts, and ‘cracks’ other Black communities across multiple districts, thereby depriving them of the opportunity to form effective voting blocs.”
Judges on the panel rejected the state’s claim that shifting conditions in Louisiana have rendered race-conscious remedies obsolete.
“There is no legal basis for this proposition, and the state offers no evidence that conditions in Louisiana have changed” enough to negate that need, the court stated.
A judge on the panel issued a stay before the Fifth Circuit’s ruling could take effect, though the move is largely symbolic, as the U.S. Supreme Court — who is already reviewing the map — had acted earlier this year.
The decision from the Fifth Circuit represents a short-term victory for the ACLU and other plaintiffs who challenged the state’s map. Still, any relief for the plaintiffs is likely to be temporary.
In March, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that similarly examines the legality of the state’s redistricting map and whether race may be considered when drawing congressional districts.
Oral arguments centered on whether Louisiana’s redistricting efforts were narrowly tailored to meet Constitutional standards and whether race was used in a manner that violated the law, as the appellees contended.
In June, the Supreme Court announced it would hear additional arguments in the case during its fall term, citing the need for more information before issuing a ruling.
This month, the Supreme Court ordered both parties to file supplemental briefs by mid-September, detailing arguments for and against Louisiana’s proposed map and addressing whether the deliberate creation of a second majority-Black congressional district “violates the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”
The Court’s hyper-focused attention on the matter also signals just how central redistricting remains in the lead-up to the 2026 midterm elections and beyond. Additionally, the timing is significant nationally, as politically charged redistricting battles are emerging in several states ahead of next year’s midterms.
Louisiana has revised its Congressional map twice since the 2020 census.
The first iteration, which included only one majority-Black district, was blocked by a federal court in 2022. The court sided with the Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP and other plaintiffs, ruling that the map diluted Black voting power and ordering the state to redraw it by January 2024.
The new map, S.B. 8, established a second Black-majority district, but it was quickly challenged in court by a group of non-Black plaintiffs. They objected to a district that stretches from Shreveport in the northwest to Baton Rouge in the southeast. In their lawsuit, they argued that the state violated the Equal Protection Clause by relying too heavily on race in drawing the maps — creating what they described as a “sinuous and jagged second majority-Black district.”
Meanwhile, Louisiana’s legal battle also represents a broader national struggle over redistricting, as both Republican- and Democrat-led states continue to clash over the introduction of new Congressional maps ahead of the midterm elections.
In Texas, tensions erupted when Democrat state legislators fled the state to prevent Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas) from convening a legislative quorum to pass a new map, adding five Republican-leaning districts. On the flip side, in California, Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) similarly unveiled a new map as well — though the Golden State’s new map is, unsurprisingly, designed to favor the Democrat Party.
The redistricting fight underscores how both parties are escalating their redistricting efforts: Republicans aim to protect their slim House majority, while Democrats seek to carve out new advantages. Like most midterms after a presidential election, 2026 is expected to serve as a referendum on the White House.
In New York, Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul signaled earlier this month that she is prepared to pursue “every option” in reshaping her state’s congressional lines as well.
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