Census Data for Redistricting Litigation

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the VRA in response to the violent suppression of Black voters in Selma, Alabama. Section 5 required certain jurisdictions with histories of discrimination to obtain federal "preclearance" before changing voting laws. Section 2 prohibited any voting practice that "results in a denial or abridgement" of the right to vote on account of race.

Congress extended the VRA's coverage to language minority groups — American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, and people of Spanish heritage. Jurisdictions with significant language minority populations were required to provide bilingual election materials. This expansion made the CVAP data framework relevant far beyond Black-white dynamics.

The Supreme Court held in City of Mobile v. Bolden that a Section 2 plaintiff must prove discriminatory intent, not merely discriminatory results. This severely limited Section 2 claims, prompting Congress to act.

Congress amended Section 2 to overturn Bolden and reinstate a results-based standard. A voting practice now violates Section 2 if it results in members of a protected class having "less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice." Intent is no longer required. This amendment is the cornerstone of modern majority-minority district litigation.

The Supreme Court established the analytical framework that governs Section 2 district claims to this day. To establish a violation, a minority group must satisfy three threshold conditions — now universally known as the Gingles preconditions — before the court conducts a "totality of circumstances" analysis under the Senate Factors.

The Court held that majority-minority districts drawn with race as the predominant factor, without sufficient justification, violate the Equal Protection Clause. This created tension between the VRA's mandate to create minority opportunity districts and the 14th Amendment's prohibition on racial gerrymandering — a tension that persists in redistricting litigation today.

The Supreme Court struck down the coverage formula used to determine which jurisdictions needed preclearance under Section 5, rendering the preclearance requirement inoperable. Without a valid coverage formula, no jurisdiction was required to seek federal approval before changing voting laws. Section 2 litigation became the primary tool for challenging discriminatory redistricting.

In a Section 2 challenge to Arizona voting rules (not a district-drawing claim), the Court articulated new factors for evaluating voting practice claims that many commentators viewed as limiting the statute's reach. The ruling heightened uncertainty about Section 2's scope, though the Court did not directly revisit the Gingles framework for district claims.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the Gingles framework and affirmed that Alabama's congressional map likely violated Section 2 by failing to create a second Black-majority district. Chief Justice Roberts joined the Court's liberal justices in rejecting Alabama's argument that race-conscious remedies were themselves unconstitutional. The decision reaffirmed that CVAP-based majority-minority district analysis remains the controlling legal standard.

Following Allen v. Milligan, Louisiana drew a new congressional map creating a second majority-Black district (the 6th CD) under court order. Non-Black voters challenged the map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Alito (April 29, 2026), the Supreme Court struck down the map, holding that Section 2 of the VRA did not actually require Louisiana to create the second majority-minority district — and therefore no compelling interest justified the legislature's use of race in drawing it. The Court simultaneously overhauled the 40-year-old Thornburg v. Gingles framework, imposing new requirements that substantially raise the bar for minority plaintiffs to prevail in Section 2 redistricting challenges. The ruling is expected to make it significantly harder for voters of color to win VRA claims and could trigger widespread redistricting in southeastern states where majority-minority districts have historically been required.