The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a case that could have major ramifications for congressional maps nationwide and potentially reshape the Voting Rights Act.
As reported on Thursday’s AM Update, Louisiana v. Callais centers on a redrawn district in Louisiana and competing court rulings over race-based boundaries. In 2022, Louisiana adopted a congressional map with one majority black district.
Louisiana’s population is about one-third black and the state has six total seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. A group of black voters sued in federal court, arguing the map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act that bars election rules or maps that “result in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the U.S. to vote on account of race or color.”
A federal district court agreed the map likely violated the Voting Rights Act and directed the state to create a new map that included a second majority Black district. Louisiana complied, but, in 2024, that new map faced a legal challenge of its own from a group of non-black voters who argued the additional district amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. A different U.S. district court agreed with the plaintiffs, ruling that the new map violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
The case was appealed up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which first heard arguments in March. In a rare move, the justices asked the parties to re-argue the case with a focus on a larger constitutional issue. That led to Wednesday’s hearing, which included a head-scratching defense of the racially motivated maps from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
On Thursday’s edition of The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn was joined by the hosts of The Fifth Column – Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch – to discuss the case and Jackson’s bizarre parallel between disabilities and race.
Jackson’s Argument
The court generally seemed poised to side with the state of Louisiana (which switched sides after initially defending the redrawn map) and the non-black voters, but such a decision will likely not include Justice Jackson if her headline-making commentary is any indication.
While questioning Garrett Greim, the attorney representing Louisiana voters who argued the court-ordered district violated the Fourteenth Amendment, Jackson compared the act of gerrymandering congressional districts based on race to the way disabled people achieved greater access to buildings as a result of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
“In my kind of paradigmatic example of this is something like the ADA. Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities, and so it was discriminatory in effect,” she began. “Congress said the facilities have to be made equally open to people with disabilities, if readily possible. I guess, I don’t understand why that’s not what’s happening here.”
She then made the connection between race and ability. “The idea in Section 2 [of the Voting Rights Act] is that we are responding to current-day manifestations of past and present decisions that disadvantage minorities and make it so that they don’t have equal access to the voting system, right,” Jackson said. “They’re disabled.”
Greim took issue with the comparison, arguing “the difference is that the remedy under the ADA and other antidiscrimination laws is not stereotyping.”
“It’s not race-based. I take your point,” Jackson acknowledged. “But you’re saying then that if the problem of no access is about race, it’s just too bad because you can’t have a remedy that relates to race.”
Again, Greim took issue with the premise. “Absolutely not… It’s whether the remedy that relates to race involves stereotyping voters and making assumptions about their politics and their views and their thoughts based on their race,” he explained. “And that’s the problem. It doesn’t exist in those other civil rights statutes.”
The Core Issue
Megyn said Jackson’s rationale is laughable. “The irony of this being a black woman sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States comparing herself to basically disabled people 50 years ago who couldn’t get into any building because none of them had ramps,” she noted. “[It’s like], ‘there’s been no progress.’ ‘We’re really back where we were.’ ‘Everything’s racist and, therefore, we can’t change anything because we’re basically still in the Jim Crow South.'”
As Foster explained, it is crucial to understand the crux of this case. “I think that the original sin here… is that there is this racial essentialist philosophical commitment in the law. It’s baked into the law,” he explained. “Everyone knows that this sort of affirmative discrimination or affirmative bias in the law – whether you’re discriminating against people because you dislike them or because you want to help them – is antithetical to the principle of equality under the law.”
“We’re trying to remedy some past harm by making the law do something that we know is at odds with the spirit of the Constitution, and, as a result, the argument she has to level is, ‘Well, we just haven’t done enough yet. They’re basically just children. We need to help them,'” he continued. “I find the entire thing pretty obscene.”
Equality vs. Equity
The left and media are freaking out about a possible weakening of the Voting Rights Act, but Foster believes this is part of a larger trend to correct the inherent issue with the law. “We have seen a number of rulings along these lines that suggest that people are well past this. Even in California, they’ve managed to knock down affirmative action efforts there,” he noted. “People want equality under the law. They prefer that to equity.”
It comes down to, in his view, a simple question: “Do we want a country where everyone is treated the same way, or do we want a country where we designate you disadvantaged or advantaged and then we prioritize you under the law so that we can level the playing field and turn America into Harrison Bergeron?”
Foster said it is “unfortunate” that Jackson and others are “stuck in this outmoded way of thinking” because he believes “it is entirely possible to address people’s needs without imagining that all of us who happen to have a particular hue in our skin are categorically disadvantaged or that everyone who is a little lighter is categorically advantaged.”
That is why he is glad to see this debate playing out in the high court. “I’m happy we’re having some of these disagreements, and I hope that we’re having them in substantive enough ways for people to actually understand what’s happening here,” Foster concluded. “No one wants discrimination, except for the people who are advocating for discrimination openly. And whether you’re advocating for it because you want to help people or not, it doesn’t matter. It is still discrimination.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with The Fifth Column by tuning in to episode 1,173 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.