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The Supreme Court issued a wave of opinions last week, wrapping a 2024-25 term filled with major victories for Donald Trump’s agenda. Amid high-profile decisions on nationwide injunctions, LGBTQ books, trans health care, and more, the court made the unusual choice to delay a ruling on Louisiana v. Callais: a redistricting case that could alter the future of voting rights across the country.

The court order did not explain the justices’ rationale for seeking a new round of arguments next fall, though it said additional guidance is forthcoming. Experts fear that the court’s 6-3 conservative supermajority is poised to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — widely considered the most important federal law safeguarding the right to vote.

The case took a long and winding road to the Supreme Court, but it has major stakes for democracy. At the center is a legal battle over Louisiana’s congressional maps, which were redrawn by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature after the 2020 census. Louisiana’s population is one-third Black, but lawmakers drew the new map to include only one majority-Black congressional district out of six total. So, in 2022, a coalition of civil rights groups and Black voters filed a federal lawsuit against Louisiana, arguing that the congressional redistricting had diluted the power of Black voters. In that case, Robinson v. Landry, a federal judge for the Middle District of Louisiana agreed that the state had packed Black voters into a single district, likely violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. The finding was upheld on appeal by a bipartisan panel of Fifth Circuit judges.

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Louisiana lawmakers then had a choice: Draw a new map with two majority-Black districts, or accept congressional lines imposed by the Middle District judge. They chose the former, crafting a new map that both met the state’s Voting Rights Act obligations and protected the seats of two Republican incumbents.

This should’ve ended the dispute. Instead, a group of self-described “non-African American voters” sued the state, claiming that the lawmakers’ consideration of race when drawing the new district lines now violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. A different district court,........

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