The conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justices may rule in favor of the Louisiana v. Callais case where Representative Jonathan Jackson (D-1st) said 19 Black Congressional Districts could be lost, positioning Republicans in the majority for a generation.
He attended the October 15 re-hearing of this case to look and listen to their questioning. What he saw and heard wasn’t good news for Black congressmen.
At the heart of this re-hearing of the Louisiana v. Callais case is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, created to end Jim Crow and give minority voters a better chance of electing representatives of their choice.
The decision is in the hands of the six conservative justices: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts, all appointed for life by Republican presidents.
The three more liberal justices are Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to sit on the court in its 233-year history, appointed by President Biden, Sonia Sotomayor, a Puerto Rican, and the first Hispanic justice, appointed by President Obama, and Justice Elena Kagan, also appointed by Obama.
Jackson attended the October 15 rehearing of the Louisiana voting rights case. He says he watched with dismay as Justice Thomas, who replaced Thurgood Marshall on the Court, never asked a question but made grimacing faces and acted as if he were bored over the oral arguments. “It was embarrassing,” Jackson said of Thomas’ behavior.
Jackson attended the re-hearing with his friend, Rep. Cleo Fields (D-Louisiana) from the Sixth Congressional District, who has a history of winning and losing his congressional seat due to white Republican challengers who accused him of violating their civil rights by running in a remapped district that favored Black representation.
Jackson referred to the trifecta, the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865 that abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment passed in 1868 granting citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the U.S that guaranteed them equal protection under the law., and the 15th Amendment passed in 1870 that prohibited the denial of voting rights based on race, color or previous condition of servitude.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 pushed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, helped to end the discrimination of Blacks in voting which violated the 15th Amendment.
According to the Fair Fight Action and Black Voters fund, striking down of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that restricts racial redistricting and together with the recent move by Republican Texas state lawmakers to remap Trump five additional congressional seats would give the GOP 27 “safe” House seats for Republicans.
Based on what Jackson heard during the Supreme Court re-hearing, he feels the conservative Justices are leaning towards voting in favor of the redistricting case, weakening the Voting Rights Act Section 2.
That would make it harder for states to draw majority-minority districts, thus fewer Black congressional seats.
Without Section 2, Jackson warned that up to 25-30 percent of the Congressional Black House seats in the Black Caucus could lose their seats and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus could lose 11 percent of their seats.
This scenario coupled with the Texas Republican-led remap battle could net an additional 27 seats at the expense of Black representation.
Jackson said this case is about whose votes count. This is about whose vote will be included or excluded.
According to Jackson, Rep. Fields won his seat 30 years ago but an alleged KKK member challenged him and redistricted him out of his seat. In 1991 when Justice Thomas was sworn into office, Jackson said he was the Justice who cast the vote that caused Fields to lose his seat.
Fields returned to Louisiana and was elected again and in January of 2025 he and Fields were sworn in together. In March of this year, the High Court picked up this case again, putting Fields’ seat in jeopardy one more time.
Jackson vowed to fight and to expose what Republicans are trying to do, but after listening to their questioning, he feels they are inclined to vote against keeping the 2nd Amendment which protects the rights of Blacks to have a majority-minority district.