Justice Clarence Thomas

Aug. 12 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to rehear a case that will have implications on the Voting Rights Act when its next term begins in October.

The high court posted an order in the case Louisiana vs. Callais on Aug. 1, directing the parties involved to file supplemental briefs. The court heard arguments in the case in March but did not hand down a decision, setting the stage for reargument at a later date.

Louisiana vs. Callais is a case over redistricting Louisiana’s congressional map.

There are six congressional districts in Louisiana. The state legislature passed a redistricted map in 2024 that included two districts where a majority of voters are Black: District 2 and District 6, represented by Rep. Troy Carter and Rep. Cleo Fields respectively.

Fields, a Democrat from Baton Rouge, was elected to represent the second majority Black district in 2024.

About one-third of Louisiana’s population is Black, reflected in the newly-drawn congressional map.

The plaintiffs, a group of voters in Louisiana, argue that race was the prevailing consideration in redistricting, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Stuart Naifeh, manager of the Redistricting Project at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, argued the case in favor of the map before the Supreme Court in March. He told UPI that fair representation is at stake in this case.

“It’s not about proportional representation,” Naifeh said. “It’s about places where unless you create a district to provide an opportunity to have representatives of your choice a particular group will not have a fair opportunity to do that because of the race-infused politics that exist in those places.”

The issue at hand in Louisiana vs. Callais, according to Naifeh, is whether the redistricting map adopted in January 2024 is a remedy to a Voting Rights Act violation or if it is itself racial gerrymandering as plaintiffs claim.

“The question that they asked us to brief is somewhat general. In some ways it’s asking us to rebrief the same issue,” Naifeh said. “But then it refers to a specific section of the plaintiff’s brief where they argue, at least in Louisiana, that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can no longer be applied without violating the Constitution.”

“So you can’t draw a second majority-Black district without violating the Constitution, is the argument that they have made,” he added.

The Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965, represents a key victory for Civil Rights advocates. It was passed to address racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 prohibits discrimination in voting policies and procedures on the basis of race, color or minority status.

The previous version of the congressional map, drawn in 2020, included just one majority-Black district. That map was determined to have violated the Voting Rights Act because it diluted the role of Black voters in electing representatives.

Former Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed that map in 2022 but the Republican-led legislature held a special session to override his veto.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a group of voters then filed a complaint to challenge the map, arguing that it was an instance of unconstitutional gerrymandering.

A federal judge ruled in favor of the NAACP and co-plaintiffs but their ruling was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court. It put enforcement of the federal judge’s decision on hold as another redistricting case was mulled by the high court Allen vs. Milligan.

The Allen vs. Milligan case was based on a congressional redistricting plan out of Alabama in which a majority of Black voters were placed into a single district, using a “race-neutral benchmark” theory and “modern computer technology” to draw its congressional map.

Plaintiffs argued that this plan, like the 2020 redistricting plan in Louisiana, violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled 5-4 in favor of Black voters in Alabama and subsequently Louisiana. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined in part by Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the court’s three liberal judges.

In Roberts’ opinion, he noted that there is sometimes difficulty in discerning between “racial predominance” and “racial consciousness.”

“When it comes to considering race in the context of districting, we have made clear that there is a difference ‘between being aware of racial considerations and being motivated by them,'” Roberts wrote. “The former is permissible; the latter is usually not. That is because ‘[r]edistricting legislatures will — almost always be aware of racial demographics,’ but such ‘race consciousness does not lead inevitably to impermissible race discrimination.'”

Naifeh highlights Kavanaugh’s partial concurrence with the majority opinion as a key factor in redistricting cases going forward, including Louisiana vs. Callais.

Kavanaugh agreed with the minority opinion of Justice Clarence Thomas that while “race-based redistricting” may be required in some circumstances, it should not continue indefinitely.

“The authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future,” Kavanaugh wrote. “But Alabama did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time.”

A victory for Naifeh, the NAACP and Black voters in Louisiana does not rely solely on the proposed congressional map remaining intact, Naifeh said.

“Victory, for Black voters in Louisiana in particular, is that they continue to have the opportunity to elect candidates of choice and are not shut out of having a voice in the political process on account of race, which was the situation until the state adopted this new map,” he said. “We don’t see victory as meaning the state keeps this particular map.”

Looking beyond Louisiana vs. Callais, Naifeh notes that race continues to be a “salient factor” in elections across the country. It remains a motivator in political platforms and civic engagement.

“We still have parts of this country where race is a very salient factor in elections and it’s not because of the Voting Rights Act,” Naifeh said. “Where race is still such a salient part of the electoral process we continue to need the Voting Rights Act. That’s what it was designed to address. So I worry that we will have a country where race is still such a salient part of elections and there is no remedy. The court needs to recognize that race continues to play a role in elections in many places.”

June 20 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld a federal law that allows victims of terrorism to sue two Palestinian entities in U.S. courts.

The decision reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals in the New York-based 2nd Circuit that found the law denied the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority fair legal process.

All nine justices ruled that the bipartisan 2019 law, called the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, does not violate due process rights of the PLO and PA.

The lawsuit and appeal involve cases from the early 2000s and not the Israel-Hamas war and airstrikes between Israel and Iran. It was based on the Antiterrorism Act of 1990, which creates a federal civil damages action for U.S. nationals injured or killed “by reason of an act of international terrorism.”

Founded in 1964, the PLO is internationally recognized as the official representative of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories. The PA, founded in 1994, is the Fatah-controlled government body that exercises partial civil control over the Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 46-page opinion that included a concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas and backed by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wanted to define the boundaries of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

Lawsuits by U.S. victims of terrorist attacks in Israel can move forward in American courts.

“It is permissible for the Federal Government to craft a narrow jurisdictional provision that ensures, as part of a broader foreign policy agenda, that Americans injured or killed by acts of terror have an adequate forum in which to vindicate their right to ATA compensation,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

In April, the high court consolidated two cases for arguments: a Justice Department appeal and an appeal by the family of Israeli-American Ari Fuld, who was fatally stabbed at a shopping mall in the West Bank in 2018.

The Biden administration initially intervened in Fuld’s case and another one brought by 11 American families who sued the Palestinian leadership groups and were awarded $650 million in a 2025 trial for several attacks in Israel.

Various semiautomatic handguns are displayed in a case at a gun store in Dundee, Ill. (2010). On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a lawsuit filed by Mexico that accuses seven American gun manufacturers and one wholesaler of unlawful sale practices, and arming drug dealers. File Photo by Brian Kersey/UPI | License Photo

June 5 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday against a lawsuit filed by Mexico that accuses seven American gun manufacturers and one wholesaler of unlawful sale practices, and arming drug dealers.

“The question presented is whether Mexico’s complaint plausibly pleads that conduct. We conclude it does not,” wrote Justice Elena Kagan in the opinion of the court.

Mexico filed suit in March against a group of companies that includes Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Colt and Glock, alleging that the defendants violated the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA, which can allow for some lawsuits against the makers and sellers of firearms.

As stated in the case document, Mexico purports the accused companies “aided and abetted unlawful gun sales that routed firearms to Mexican drug cartels,” and failed to exercise “reasonable care” to keep their guns from being trafficked into Mexico.

Kagan explained that it falls on the plaintiff in this case to properly show that the defendant companies directly committed violations of PLCAA, or otherwise “the predicate violation opens a path to making a gun manufacturer civilly liable for the way a third party has used the weapon it made.”

Kagan did include that “Mexico has a severe gun violence problem, which its government views as coming from north of the border.” She added that the country has only a single gun store, which is slightly inaccurate as Mexico currently has two, but in regard of the one store she mentioned, Kagan claimed that it “issues fewer than 50 gun permits each year.”

She also purported gun traffickers can purchase weaponry in the United States, often illegally, and then take those guns to drug cartels in Mexico. Kagan further noted that as per the Mexican government, “as many as 90% of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico originated in the United States.”

Nonetheless, the court ruled “that Mexico has not plausibly alleged aiding and abetting on the manufacturers’ part.” This is why, Kagan explained, that the defendant companies are immune under the PLCAA.

In a concurring statement, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the court’s opinion hasn’t resolved what exactly a future plaintiff will have to show to prove a defendant has committed a PLCAA violation, and that Mexico hadn’t “adequately pleaded its theory of the case.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also included a concurring statement that Congress passed PLCAA in order to decide “which duties to impose on the firearms industry,” and that ignoring PLCAA’s set reasons that do “authorize lawsuits like the one Mexico filed here” would twist PLCAA’s main purpose.