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The Supreme Court’s recent reargument in Louisiana v. Callais has thrust the future of race-based redistricting into the national spotlight, and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon was right to say this fight should be put back in the hands of voters, not perpetual courtroom engineering. Conservatives who believe in equal treatment under the law should cheer a move away from racial spoils and toward maps that treat citizens as individuals rather than members of competing identity blocs.
At the heart of the dispute is Louisiana’s 2024 map, which created a second Black-majority congressional district and drew fierce litigation over whether race, not traditional districting principles, drove the mapmakers’ pens. The Supreme Court’s reargument on October 15, 2025, asked whether Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can be stretched to require race-conscious remedies that themselves sort voters by race, a question with enormous consequences for federalism and electoral fairness.
Dhillon, now heading the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, has been outspoken that government must enforce the law without turning every policy into racial preference or grievance litigation. Her office has even sent letters challenging dubious minority-majority districts and pushing back on maps that look more like racial checklists than sensible, competitive districts. Conservatives ought to admire an official willing to call out the modern machinery of identity politics instead of bowing to it.
This is not about denying history or silencing legitimate civil-rights claims — it is about rejecting a permanent caste system where political power is parceled by color rather than earned by ideas and service. For decades the Left has weaponized race to secure safe seats and comfortable majorities; rooting out that system will force politicians to actually compete for votes and answer to constituents, not to grievance-fueled interest groups. Americans who love merit, not monopolies of victimhood, should stand with efforts that restore competition to our politics.
The justices themselves signaled during arguments that the time has come to rein in the overreach of Section 2 as it’s been applied to mapmaking, and a sensible ruling could halt the endless cycle of race-first remedies that keep our politics balkanized. Limiting race-based redistricting won’t silence legitimate discrimination claims, but it will prevent courts from turning every map into a racial Rorschach test and could stabilize representation across the country. That recalibration could also have big political effects, which is exactly why the left fights it so hard.
If conservatives truly want fair maps, the answer is to trust voters with redistricting reforms — whether through citizen commissions or clearer rules that prioritize geography, communities of interest, and competitiveness over racial quotas. The Supreme Court has recognized that voters can choose to take mapmaking out of legislatures’ hands, and the path to real reform runs through citizen engagement and state-level fixes, not endless federal litigation. Voters, not lawyers and judges obsessed with identity metrics, should decide how their representation is structured.
Patriots who care about equal protection and honest politics should back Dhillon’s stance and the Court’s move to restrain race-first redistricting while protecting real voting rights. Harmeet Dhillon’s confirmation to lead the Civil Rights Division signaled a new willingness in Washington to enforce the law without elevating race to a permanent organizing principle, and conservatives must rally behind that commonsense, colorblind approach. If we want a government that answers to all Americans equally, now is the time to defend reforms that return power to voters.
