Staff Reports
The Supreme Court quietly hit the reset button on two high-profile Voting Rights Act fights — and one justice wasn’t thrilled. Instead of issuing a big ruling, the justices granted, vacated, and remanded both cases so the lower courts can take another look in light of the Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision. That procedural move keeps a lot of big questions alive, while giving judges new guardrails on race-conscious mapmaking.
What the Court actually did: GVRs, not a decision
The Court didn’t decide either case on the merits. In Board of Election Commissioners v. Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe, the justices vacated the lower-court rulings and sent the matters back to be reconsidered under the standard set in Louisiana v. Callais. In plain English: lower courts must now apply Callais before anyone gets a final answer. That buys time and forces a re-check — which, for advocates on both sides, feels a lot like a second bite at the apple.
Why Louisiana v. Callais changed the rules
Callais tightened the rules about when race can drive district lines. The Court made clear that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act doesn’t automatically justify race-based remedies like creating or reconfiguring districts by race alone. Because Callais reshaped the legal test, the high court told the lower courts to re-evaluate both the Mississippi and North Dakota rulings under that new framework. Expect judges to ask whether prior fixes relied too heavily on race — and whether those fixes are still constitutional under Callais.
Big unanswered question: who can sue?
One real wild card is enforcement. The Eighth Circuit had ruled that Section 2 doesn’t create a private right of action, meaning private parties might be blocked from bringing these suits and only the Department of Justice could enforce the law. The Supreme Court’s GVRs didn’t settle that. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned as much, writing that “Thus I see no basis for vacating the lower court’s judgment,” because Callais didn’t answer the private-enforcement question. Translation: lower courts will decide whether private voters keep their day in court, and that could change how voting disputes are fought nationwide.
The big picture: stability, limits, and a political headache
For conservatives who long argued that the courts were too eager to redraw maps on racial lines, Callais and these remands are a welcome correction. The Court is forcing a reset that emphasizes constitutional limits over automatic race-based fixes. For the Left, and for communities fighting harmful maps, this is a source of real worry — and fast. Still, the high court’s move wasn’t a full-throated ruling; it punted the thorny enforcement question back to the lower courts. That keeps things messy for a while. The next chapters will play out in the Southern District of Mississippi, the Eighth Circuit, and possibly back at the Supreme Court — and the outcome will shape how Section 2 is enforced for years to come.
