Louisiana v. Callais · ¶32

The Court modified this framework for racial gerrymandering cases. Although any use of race in government decisionmaking generally triggers strict scrutiny, in gerrymandering cases a challenger must show that race was the government's predominant consideration. See Bush v. Vera, 517 U. S. 952, 964 (1996) (plurality opinion). And in cases where race predominated, States would sometimes assert that compliance with the Voting Rights Act provided a compelling interest justifying the use of race. Yet we never decided whether compliance with the Act could constitute a compelling interest. Instead, we repeatedly assumed without deciding that the Voting Rights Act could constitute a compelling interest because in all those cases, the Act actually did not demand the State's race- predominant districting. Thus, the States in those cases could not satisfy strict scrutiny regardless of whether…

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