The redistricting decision prompted Thomas to call for repeal of the Voting Rights Act

Justice Clarence Thomas said Wednesday the Supreme Court should go further than its recent ruling on the Voting Rights Act, saying the key anti-discrimination law is divisive and should never apply to redistricting.

“As I explained more than 30 years ago, I will continue to hold that [section two] of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate redistricting at all,” Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, wrote at the same time.

Thomas’ comments came as part of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, agreeing to the finding that one of the congressional districts with a majority of Black people was unconstitutionally racist.

The decision had far-reaching implications, working to repeal the second section of the Voting Rights Act, a civil rights-era law that made it illegal for voting policies to discriminate on the basis of race. The decision already limited states’ ability to use race as a factor when drawing minority districts, but Thomas’s dissent went further, saying the law should not be used to impose restrictions at all.

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“Today’s decision should largely end this ‘catastrophic crisis’ in voting rights legislation,” Thomas wrote, citing the 1994 consensus.

Thomas said the high court’s previous interpretations of section two of the Voting Rights Act encouraged states to engage in race-based mapping. He said the second-tier text covers access to ballots and voting procedures, not how states draw district lines, and therefore shouldn’t be used at all in lawsuits about maps.

Thomas, an appointee of President George HW Bush, has long advocated repeal of the Voting Rights Act. The conservative justice, the second black justice in history after Justice Thurgood Marshall, said in the 1994 case, Holder v. Hall, that people who use the second section of the law to seek redrawn districts have lost the minority vote are misreading it.

“The ideas on which our suffrage decisions are based should be repugnant to any nation that strives for the principle of a color-blind Constitution,” Thomas wrote at the time.

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Voting rights activists protest outside the US Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 15, 2025, as the court prepares to hear arguments challenging Louisiana’s congressional map. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images)

The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, stops short of Thomas’ position. Alito wrote that while compliance with the Voting Rights Act may sometimes involve the use of race, Louisiana was not required to create a second black district, meaning its map was unconstitutional.

“‘Our acceptance of state action based on race has been rare for a reason,'” Alito wrote, saying Louisiana has “no compelling interest” in packing black voters into the state.

The years-long case stems from Louisiana’s efforts to redistrict after the 2020 census, when the state added a second black district after a lower court said the Voting Rights Act required it. That new map was then dismissed as racially offensive, prompting a new case from the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan participates in a debate at George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC, on September 13, 2016. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

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The three liberal justices dissented in an argument, endorsed by Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, that the majority decision, along with Thomas’ strong opinion, stripped the minority of voting protections. The decision “gives Section 2 all but a dead letter,” Kagan wrote.

“Under the Court’s new 2nd Circuit opinion, the State, without legal consequences, can systematically reduce the voting power of minority citizens,” he wrote.