GOP Could Pick Up Roughly 19 House Seats After SCOTUS Guts VRA

The Trump administration and state officials challenged the revised map, arguing it amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander in violation of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law, reports said on Wednesday.

In a majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said that “because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

About one-third of Louisiana’s residents are African-American, and the state’s only two Democratic lawmakers in Congress (compared to four House Republicans) were elected from majority-black districts.