Voting Rights Act on the line: key takeaways from supreme court hearing

Majority of US justices appear sympathetic to weakening key civil rights law in Callais v Louisiana case

The US supreme court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in Callais v Louisiana, a high-stakes voting rights case in which the court's conservative majority appears poised to gut one of the most powerful provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

At the heart of the case is section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits electoral maps that dilute the voting power of minority groups. Lawyers for the state of Louisiana, a group of non-African American voters" and the Trump administration say that the court needs to do away with the 2024 map. If the court agrees, it would ultimately set a precedent that makes it considerably harder to bring redistricting lawsuits on the basis of race, and undercut section 2.