Judicial Watch and Allied Educational Foundation Clarify Supreme Court Arguments for Elimination of Race-Based Congressional Districts

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it filed an amici curiae (friends of the court) brief along with the Allied Educational Foundation (AEF) to the Supreme Court of the United States, asking the court to eliminate woke, race-based congressional districting and ban the use racial preferences in drawing up “majority-minority” congressional districts.

The filing comes in the case Louisiana v. Phillip Callais et al. (No. 24-109), which is up on appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. The lower court ruled 2-1 against Louisiana after it adopted a racially drawn congressional map for future elections.

In January 2025, Judicial Watch and AEF filed an initial amicus brief in this case, asking the court to affirm a lower court ruling that Louisiana violated the constitution when it crowded minority voters into congressional districts.

Rather than ruling on the appeal last term, the Supreme Court postponed ruling and ordered the case be reargued in October 2025. Judicial Watch and AEF submitted supplemental brief in response to the court’s August 1, 2025, order directing the parties and amici to address “whether the state’s intentional creation of a second majority-minority congressional district violates the 14^th [equal protection] or 15^th  [the right of citizens to vote] Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”

 In their recent brief, Judicial Watch and AEF argue that there is a conflict between the Voting Rights Act and prior court precedent, and that “dividing of citizens by race … is now doing more harm than good:”

The longstanding conflict between this Court’s interpretation of § 2 of the VRA [Voting Rights Act] and its Equal Protection Clause jurisprudence has run its course.…The former mandates racial districting while the latter prohibits intentional racial classifications. For almost 30 years, courts and states have struggled to balance the conflicting mandates under [Supreme Court precedent] Gingles and the Equal Protection Clause. The dividing of citizens by race, as required by Gingles, is now doing more harm than good.

Judicial Watch and AEI argue that the proposed drawing of racial districts violates the 14^th and 15^th Amendments, that states “lack any interest, much less a compelling one, to create racial gerrymanders, even if done in a good faith effort,” and that Louisiana “impermissibly used race to create a second majority-minority district.”

Judicial Watch and AEF submit:

This Court has compared race-based districting to segregation of “public parks, … buses, … and schools,” and warned that we “should not be carving electorates into racial blocs.” … That is because “[c]lassifications of citizens solely on the basis of race ‘are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.’” … Racial gerrymandering, like all “[r]acial classifications of any sort” cause “lasting harm to our society” because “[t]hey reinforce the belief, held by too many for too much of our history, that individuals should be judged by the color of their skin.” …

There should be no question that race-based division of citizens for purposes of compliance with § 2 and Gingles is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, the “central purpose” of which “is to prevent the States from purposefully discriminating between individuals on the basis of race.”… The same may be said of the Voting Rights Act.

“We are asking the Supreme Court to eliminate race-based congressional districting,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The court should restore non-discrimination as the foundation of voting rights.”

AEF is a charitable and educational foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life through education. In furtherance of that goal, the Foundation has engaged in a number of projects, which include, but are not limited to, educational and health conferences domestically and abroad. AEF has partnered frequently with Judicial Watch to fight government and judicial corruption and to promote a return to ethics and morality in the nation’s public life.

Judicial Watch is a national leader in voting integrity and voting rights. As part of its work, Judicial Watch assembled a team of highly experienced voting rights attorneys who stopped discriminatory elections in Hawaii, and cleaned up voter rolls in California, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, among other achievements.

In August 2025, Judicial Watch announced that the Supreme Court has scheduled oral argument for October 8, 2025, in its lawsuit filed on behalf of Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors, who are before the court to vindicate their standing to challenge an Illinois law extending Election Day for 14 days beyond the date established by federal law.

Also in August, Judicial Watch filed a brief to the Supreme Court that opposes the State of Mississippi’s attempt to overturn the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision, which struck down a law allowing ballots received after Election Day to be counted.

Federal courts for Oregon, California and Illinois have ruled that Judicial Watch’s lawsuits may proceed against those states to force them to clean their voter rolls.

Judicial Watch announced in May that its work led to the removal of more than five million ineligible names from voter rolls nationwide.

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Source: https://www.judicialwatch.org/race-based-congressional-districts/