A former University of Chicago lecturer in constitutional law was, as he often is, loftily disappointed by the failure of others to meet his standards. After last week’s Supreme Court ruling that limits the consideration of race in drawing congressional districts, he said the court was abandoning its role in “ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups.”

Barack Obama was regretting the court’s understanding of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But his notions of “participation” and “rights” do not fit the following facts.

The VRA guarantees minorities equal opportunity “to participate” in electoral politics, and to elect “representatives of their choice.” Approximately one-third of Louisianans are Black. After the 2020 Census, litigation ensued when the state legislature produced a congressional map with only one “majority-minority” district.

Bowing to a court-created (many years after 1965) principle of racial proportionality, the state drew a second such district. It slithered like a 250-mile-long snake from northwest to southeast Louisiana, meandering in order to corral enough Black voters and exclude enough White ones.

Such racial arithmetic, which both parties in various states........

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