Wait, So the Supreme Court Recently Decided Gerrymandering Cases in Alabama AND Louisiana? What's the Difference?

I heard from many of you that you appreciated my drawings of the Alabama redistricting case. Thank you! I’m glad to hear it, and thank you to those of you that shared this with others and gave me feedback.

I realized something as I heard from you, though. In that post, I was just tracing the story of the Alabama redistricting case, which is only part of this spring’s story regarding gerrymandering. Louisiana’s redistricting saga is the one that resulted in the already infamous Callais decision—the one you’ve been hearing about since the end of April.

So that’s Louisiana. (This was Alabama.) The Louisiana and Alabama cases have a lot in common and they played off each other over the years. In fact, the reason why they are both such sagas is probably because there were signs that the Supreme Court was open to changing this part of the law, if someone would push for it in the right way. It just took a few tries to get it done (perhaps someone got cold feet on the first try in 2023?).

If this is confusing, you’re reading it correctly. The Court is being very disingenuous here, using words that say one thing while doing another. That’s one reason why I’m not going into the weeds on the legal logic, because it isn’t logical. The point is that there were enough votes to change the law, and it just took some machination to get there.

Finally, the Court’s disdain for using the law to cultivate a multi-racial democracy is apparent even in the tiniest details. In its June 2nd decision, the Court refused to use an upper case “B” to refer to the “Black-opportunity” district (another term for “majority-Black district, which I’ve been using here). But the brackets show that it was quoting the Supreme Court in 2023, where the opinion used an upper case “B.” 1

Thanks again for being here. If you made it this far, then you must also be a so-called Court watcher, so beware! The Supreme Court only has a few weeks left of this year’s term, which means that it’s going to be putting out its big opinions soon. Today, June 18, is a decision day, so it may have already happened by the time you read this…