Voting Equity v. Constitutional Equality

Liberty Nation ^ | Oct 16, 2025 | John Klar

[E. Pluribus Unum]

US Supreme Court addresses race-based districting.

The state of Louisiana has become the focal point of longstanding tensions between the well-intentioned goals of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to prevent racial discrimination and the specific provisions of the Constitution mandating that all citizens be treated equally, regardless of skin color. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Oct. 15 in Louisiana v. Callais, a dispute that has profound implications for future elections in the United States.

Voting Equality vs Equity

Mainstream media headlines inveigh against the conservative menace of “gutting” the Voting Rights Act. The political stakes of the Supreme Court’s resolution of Louisiana’s struggle to comply with conflicting federal mandates will impact the entire nation, but the core legal issue is how to reconcile the race-focused provisions of the Voting Rights Act with the colorblind aspirations of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the voting guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment. (The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits federal and state governments from denying or abridging a citizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”)

Behind this legal tension lies a growing friction in modern American society between the “I have a dream” goals of Martin Luther King Jr. (and the nation’s founders), in which racism is eradicated and all are equal, versus the “equity” arguments of the social justice movement. Under this view, persistent racial disparities that the far left attributes to “systemic racism” must be reversed through a race-based “equity” lens that affords so-called marginalized folks preferential treatment by the government in order to atone for past racism on the part of the majority white population.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson tapped into this vein of racial angst during oral arguments on Oct. 15, when she equated the alleged voting disadvantages of black voters with a physical...