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The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in a Louisiana voting rights
case will
make it harder to challenge political maps as being racially
discriminatory, but the ruling will likely have limited effect on
statewide district maps in Pennsylvania, where the state
constitution provides stronger protections against
gerrymandering.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6-3
decision split along ideological lines that raises the bar for
proving illegal racial gerrymandering.

The case revolved around Section
2 of the Voting Rights Act, a Civil Rights era protection that
prohibits racial discrimination in voting and has historically been
used to challenge how voting districts are drawn and require that
members of a racial minority have an equal opportunity to elect
candidates of their choice. In the most recent round of
redistricting, Louisiana’s legislature drew a map that would create
a second congressional district that was majority-Black, instead of
the single majority-Black district it had previously. The new map
was challenged on the grounds that it explicitly used race as the
basis in determining the districts.

“Allowing race to play any part in government decisionmaking
represents a departure from the constitutional rule that applies in
almost every other context,” conservative Justice Samuel Alito
wrote for the majority. He argued that compliance with Section 2
“could not justify the state’s use of race-based redistricting
here.”

Election law experts in Pennsylvania have
said in the past that Section 2 hasn’t had much of an impact in
the state.

Chris Fowler, a geography professor at Penn State University,
said that’s because there hasn’t been a clear advantage for
mapmakers of either party in drawing majority-minority
districts.

Most of the people of color in Pennsylvania are concentrated in
its major cities. Minority voters in Philadelphia, a heavily Black
city, are generally already concentrated in districts where their
numbers allow them to elect preferred candidates. Meanwhile,
Pittsburgh has a smaller minority population, and Black communities
in the city tend to be geographically intermixed with communities
of other races. More racially mixed communities and less consistent
racial bloc voting make claims under Section 2 harder to bring in
Pennsylvania than in the South.

So while the Voting Rights Act remains relevant in the state and
communities of color exist, Fowler said there are “very
idiosyncratic reasons that it would be hard to win a case” on those
grounds in Pennsylvania.

”It’s not necessary to draw a racially gerrymandered district to
gain advantage,” he said. “I think both parties sort of know it and
they come up with maps that are pretty bland when it comes to
racial gerrymandering.”

Ben Geffen, a lawyer at the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Public
Interest Law Center, agreed that Section 2’s relevance in
Pennsylvania has been limited, aside from the general background
rule it created — that you cannot discriminate racially when
drawing districts — and the implications it has had for the growing
Latino population in the northeast part of the state.

Section 2 has been invoked at the local level. Toward the end of
President Joe Biden’s administration, his Department of Justice

brought a case against Hazleton, alleging that its at-large
method of electing city council members was diluting the power of
Hispanic voters. Donald Trump’s Justice Department
dropped that case. The Hazleton Area School District is
currently facing a
similar accusation that its at-large elections lock Hispanic
voters out “from electing candidates of their choice.”

But Geffen has concerns about the Callais decision that extend
beyond Pennsylvania. Namely, that more states may turn to drawing
partisan gerrymanders, which the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 in
Rucho v. Common Cause that federal courts cannot review. He worries
the overlap of racial and partisan voting trends could produce
similar maps that are harder to challenge.

Pennsylvania, however, has dealt with partisan gerrymandered
maps several times in recent years, and the state’s Supreme Court
has struck them down. Geffen said that’s because rules about
fairness are much stronger in state law than they are
federally.

“Our [state] Supreme Court has said the [state] constitution
prohibits partisan gerrymandering, so state lawmakers can’t
brazenly draw maps for partisan gains,” he said. “I think that has
put important boundaries on what map makers do here that helps
avoid the excesses we see in other parts of the country.”

Marian Schneider, an adjunct professor of law at Villanova
University, said that in her two decades practicing election law in
Pennsylvania she has only pursued one case related to Section 2.
She agreed state law protections are stronger, and said there may
be a path to bring the types of arguments in state court that a
plaintiff might have previously made in federal court under Section
2.

But Schneider said that regardless of Section 2’s historically
limited role in Pennsylvania, Wednesday’s ruling will have an
effect on the state’s voters.

“Knowing that other states could engage in suppression of
minority voters, we are all affected by that, because if they are
not truly electing people that reflect the voters, what happens in
Congress affects all of us,” she said.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with
Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.