Tipsheet

Here's How Justice Thomas Would Have Taken the SCOTUS Voting Rights Act Decision Even Further

Dmitri Bolt
Dmitri Bolt  |  April 30, 2026 4:30 PM

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, which a group of voters had challenged as the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. The ruling upheld a lower court decision that barred the state from using the new map. 

Justice Clarence Thomas, widely viewed as the Court’s most conservative member, wrote in concurrence that he would have gone further, calling for a reconsideration of how the Court interprets Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In his view, the provision should be applied strictly in a textualist sense, ending what he described as a “disastrous misadventure” in voting-rights jurisprudence and preventing future Section 2 challenges to congressional maps.

Today’s decision should largely put an end to this “disastrous misadventure” in voting-rights jurisprudence. As I explained more than 30 years ago, I would go further and hold that §2 of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate districting at all.  The relevant text prohibits States from imposing or applying a “voting qualification,” “prerequisite to voting,” or “standard, practice, or procedure,” in a manner that results in a denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race.  52 U. S. C. §10301(a).  How States draw district lines does not fall within any of those three categories.   The words in §2 instead “reach only ‘enactments that regulate citizens’ access to the ballot or the processes for counting a ballot’; they ‘do not include a State’s ... choice of one districting scheme over another.’” Therefore, no §2 challenge to districting should ever succeed.

Justice Thomas' view, however, remains non-binding, as it would require the overturning of a major Supreme Court case, Thornburg v. Gingles, something the majority opinion did not discuss.

This comes as the Supreme Court’s decision is paving the way for much of the South to redistrict in ways that could benefit Republicans, bolstering their chances of maintaining control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections.