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Wisconsin will likely face limited immediate impact at both the legislative and congressional level from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that narrowed how the Voting Rights Act can be used to challenge political maps. But it may make it easier for people to challenge school board and city council maps in court.

The ruling in Louisiana v. Callais raises the bar for voting rights challenges by requiring stronger evidence that race, rather than political considerations, drove how districts were drawn, and making it easier for states to defend maps on nonracial grounds. 

Dan Lennington, the managing vice president and deputy counsel at the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, said the boundaries that could be most easily struck down as a result of the Wednesday ruling are those that were drawn explicitly for racial reasons. Some examples, he said, are the boundaries for Milwaukee city council districts and certain school districts.

Race is a common factor in drawing Milwaukee city council districts, though campaigns to add additional majority-minority districts haven’t always succeeded. 

For example, departing Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in December 2021 vetoed a proposed city council map because it didn’t include a third Latino-majority district, only for Mayor Cavalier Johnson to sign that same map several weeks later.

Lennington also pointed to state laws that use race as a factor to determine school district boundaries. One of those laws explicitly mentions “racial composition of the pupils” as a factor for drawing boundaries — a law that he said is now implicated by the Callais decision.

“If a plaintiff comes to us and says that they live in a district that’s been racially gerrymandered, we would take a very close look at that case,” he said.

Less likely impact on legislative and congressional level

There likely won’t be much impact in Wisconsin at the congressional district level because there’s just one majority-minority district in the state, UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said ahead of the ruling. The 4th Congressional District, represented by Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, comprises much of Milwaukee and the surrounding suburbs in Milwaukee County. 

Even if Section 2 of the VRA did not apply, he said, the district would likely stay much the same given the general principle of keeping communities intact. 

A decision like the one handed down, he said, “would open the door if line drawers wanted to break up that county or city in some way, but I think it would probably be challenged on other grounds.”

Challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional maps have often had more to do with partisan than racial line-drawing. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, said he wasn’t surprised by the federal decision but reiterated his call for new congressional maps, which he said unfairly gave Republicans a 6-2 seat advantage in a swing state.

But two recent court decisions in Wisconsin rejected challenges to the state’s congressional maps on the basis that they constitute an unconstitutional “anti-competitive” gerrymander. Those rulings focused not on race, but on whether courts can take up claims based on partisan advantage. 

Doug Poland, co-founder of the liberal law firm Law Forward, said this ruling could empower lawmakers to pursue partisan goals while making racial challenges harder to prove.

But because of Wisconsin’s demographics — a largely white state, with the most significant minority populations concentrated around the Milwaukee area — the state has run into Section 2 challenges far less often than southern states, he said.

“As a practical matter, this decision doesn’t have a big impact on Wisconsin at the moment,” he said. “That could change.”

There’s more at play among state legislative districts, Burden said. The state has nine majority-minority legislative districts, where a single minority group makes up over half of the population: seven in the Assembly and two in the Senate. Two other districts — one in each chamber — are minority influence districts, where combined minority populations make up a majority.

Democrats in Wisconsin have generally steered clear of breaking up minority districts to avoid violating the VRA, Burden said, but packing minority voters in one district sometimes costs them adjacent districts where they might have been competitive if the minority population was more evenly distributed. For that reason, there’s a history of Republicans supporting majority-minority districts in the state.

The issue has been a factor in recent redistricting fights. In March 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court initially selected Evers’ legislative maps, which created an additional majority-Black Assembly district. 

But while Evers argued this addition was necessary to comply with the Voting Rights Act, it drew criticism from both sides of the aisle. A Black Democratic legislator criticized the move as diluting Black voices, while Republicans appealed the maps to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sided with the GOP and ordered the Wisconsin Supreme Court to select a different map.

If any of the districts are found to be out of compliance with the U.S. Constitution under the ruling via some additional challenge, Burden said, Wisconsin may draw new districts sooner than later.

“I don’t know who that advantages,” he said. “It probably depends who’s drawing the lines.”

Lennington also pointed out President Donald Trump’s success with Black and Latino voters relative to past GOP candidates, adding that splitting majority-minority legislative districts wouldn’t necessarily give either party an advantage here.

What he did predict, though, is that splitting such districts “might polarize us even more” if they were replaced with districts drawn on partisan as opposed to racial lines.

“It just might make the red more red and the blue more blue,” he said.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin will likely see limited, local effects from Voting Rights Act ruling — at least for now is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

After the U.S. Supreme Court severely weakened the federal Voting Rights Act in an April 29 decision, a furious U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries condemned what he called an “illegitimate” conservative majority on the court.

“This isn’t even the Roberts Court,” Jeffries said, referring to Chief Justice John Roberts. “It’s the Trump Court.”

Democrats are renewing their calls to overhaul the Supreme Court in the wake of the court’s decision, which empowers states to gerrymander congressional maps in ways that will break apart districts where a majority of residents are Black, Hispanic or belong to other minority groups. 

The momentous opinion overturned the reasoning behind decades of court cases that relied on the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a law born of efforts to stamp out Jim Crow voting laws in the South, to protect these majority-minority districts.

For years, critics of the court, where conservatives enjoy a 6-3 majority, have pushed for changes. Those efforts often center on expanding the size of the court to dilute the influence of the majority or imposing term limits on the justices, though other ideas, like narrowing the kinds of cases the court can consider, have also been discussed.

But the April 29 decision seems to be the last straw for some Democrats and progressives, though they are unlikely to be able to force any of the changes on their wishlist — at least for a long time. 

After rulings in recent years that ended the federal right to an abortion and handed President Donald Trump sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution while in office, they are fed up with a court they view as unmoored from the law and ruling based on politics.

“We cannot protect voting rights, civil rights or the environment as long as we have a Supreme Court majority that is captured by MAGA authoritarians,” Doug Lindner, senior director of judiciary and democracy at the League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, told reporters on Thursday. “We need to take back our Supreme Court.”

Any effort to impose significant changes at the court will encounter stiff Republican opposition. GOP lawmakers have praised the court’s latest decision and some see long-serving Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito as conservative icons. Unless Democrats win 60 seats in the Senate or eliminate the filibuster, Congress is highly unlikely to pass a major overhaul.

Republicans have denounced past proposals to change the court. After President Joe Biden proposed 18-year terms for justices and other changes in July 2024, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said the plan “would tilt the balance of power and erode not only the rule of law, but the American people’s faith in our system of justice.”

No action under Biden

Supreme Court reform has long percolated as an issue among Democrats and progressives, but picked up steam during the 2020 presidential primary campaign. 

The court’s ideological makeup had already moved toward conservatives after Justice Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote on key decisions, retired in 2018 and was replaced by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative. Republicans then cemented a firm 6-3 majority on the court in the fall of 2020 after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal, died and was replaced by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Campaigning for president, then-candidate Biden voiced support for a presidential commission that would study court reform. After winning election, Biden named a blue ribbon panel of law professors, former judges and other lawyers, which issued a final report in December 2021.

The commission’s report stopped short of endorsing structural changes. It took no position on expanding the size of the court from nine members, citing “profound disagreement” among commission members over the idea. The commission also adopted no stance on term limits for justices.

The report was essentially put on a shelf — Biden made no serious effort to advance a court overhaul, though he later proposed some reforms after ending his campaign for reelection.

Public opinion dropping

Americans’ view of the Supreme Court has been falling. An August 2025 Pew Research Center survey found 48% of Americans hold a favorable view of the court, a 22-percentage point drop from August 2020.

A survey released in September 2025 by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found 69% support for term limits but only 31% support for expanding the size of the court.

Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University and the executive director of the Emmet J. Bondurant Center for Constitutional Law, Practice and Democracy, said past courts would have been responsive to the prospect of legislation, but the current court isn’t swayed by public opinion.

In some cases the court tries to preserve its legitimacy by giving the other side a win, Segall said, but in general the court’s decisions since 2018, when Kennedy retired, can be explained by viewing the court as a subset of the Republican Party.

“This court is defined by the Republican Party,” he said.

Segall has called for dividing the court evenly between conservative and liberal appointees. An evenly-split court would encourage greater compromise among the justices, he contends. He also supports expanding the court and term limits if possible. But he bluntly predicted court reform wouldn’t happen in his lifetime.

“If Democrats have the power to do it, they won’t do it,” Segall said.

Action unlikely, at least in short term

Jeffries, who will likely become U.S. House speaker if Democrats retake the chamber in the November midterm elections, said this week that “everything was on the table” in terms of the Supreme Court.

“In the new Congress, we’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court,” Jeffries told the MeidasTouch Network.

Rep. John Rose, a Tennessee Republican, said on social media that Jeffries’ comments show that Democrats are preparing to “nuke the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court the second they’re back in power.”

Trump and some Republicans in Congress, convinced Democrats will end the filibuster to pass priorities like Supreme Court reform, want Republicans to end the filibuster first and enact a host of conservative priorities before the party potentially loses control of the Senate following the November elections.

But even if Democrats end the filibuster, the party faces a steep climb to changing the court unless it retakes control of Congress and the White House. That means any major overhaul almost certainly wouldn’t become law until at least 2029.

Trump’s response

Trump has had a turbulent relationship with the court but would be virtually certain to veto legislation remaking it while he remains in office.

While the justices have protected Trump and future presidents from criminal prosecution for actions taken as part of their presidential duties, they struck down his sweeping worldwide tariffs as illegal, dealing a major blow to one of his signature policies. They also refused to hear legal challenges that sought to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss.

Still, Trump scoffed on Thursday at Democratic hopes to remake the court in the future. He accused the party of wanting 21 justices on the court (Democratic-sponsored plans in recent years have called for 13 or 15 justices). He also called Jeffries’ comments a “dangerous statement.”

“Hakeem Jeffries said the Supreme Court is illegitimate,” Trump said Thursday. “That’s a rough statement.”

By Zara Norman/Medill News Service

WASHINGTON — John Bailey said he’s saved tens of thousands of dollars over the last decade by relying on a generic prescription to lower his cholesterol.

The 68-year-old from central Texas was able to get a generic because the patent on a brand-name medication expired. He and many other Americans worried that a case the U.S. Supreme Court heard April 29 could restrict access to generic drugs more broadly.

“It’s probably going to make a difference in how much we pay,” Bailey said while sightseeing near the court.

The case, Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. v. Amarin Pharma, Inc., will decide whether generic drug manufacturer Hikma infringed on a cardiovascular medication patented by Amarin when it marketed an unpatented use.

That practice, known as “skinny labeling,” is a key pathway that brings cheaper generic drugs to market sooner. The Journal of the American Medical Association found skinny labels were used by 43% of generics from 2015 to 2019. 

Should justices affirm the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s 2024 ruling for Amarin, experts warned it could have a chilling effect on the generic industry writ large, which would seriously hike up drug costs.

“It would mean that the monopoly prices of prescription drugs that are currently being paid right now have no end to them,” Charles Duan, a patent lawyer who wrote a “friend-of-the-court” brief in favor of Hikma, told Medill News Service in an interview ahead of oral arguments.

For consumers, higher prices would be untenable. Six in 10 US adults are already worried about the affordability of their prescription drugs, per a March Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Drug prices fall with an increasing number of generic competitors, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Issue is narrow, drugmaker says

The case deals with an issue that policymakers have debated for decades: whether federal policy should encourage drug companies to develop new products by giving them monopoly control for a certain number of years, or seek to make drugs more affordable by shortening the monopoly window.

Amarin argued to the court  that the case hinges on a narrow regulatory matter that would have neither a bearing on skinny labels, nor on the 1984 law that established a framework for cheaper drug manufacturing.

Tegan Berry, a spokesperson for Amarin, said in an email drugmakers would lose their business purpose for research if the company loses the case.

“The broad safe harbor Hikma seeks for skinny labels will eviscerate financial incentives for research into new uses for existing drug treatments,” Berry wrote. 

Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson seemed wary of how a finding for Amarin could impact the industry writ large. Kavanaugh in particular emphasized that the 1984 law balanced innovation with affordability, and ensured the skinny label pathway was codified.

Kavanaugh cited a brief written for Hikma by former U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat who was one of that statute’s principal authors, saying the Federal Circuit’s decision threatened to “undermine” the generic pharmaceutical industry.

The brief “points out, you know, generics have saved $3.4 trillion over the past 10 years, but the Federal Circuit’s decision leaves generic drug companies in the dark about what might expose them to liability,” Kavanaugh said while questioning Michael Huston, the attorney representing Amarin. “That’s going to have some serious implications market-wide.”

Generics expand access

The concern for generic manufacturers is the threat of infringement lawsuits will force them to wait until patents expire to bring drugs to market, rather than trying sooner with one unpatented use.

“Generic companies won’t choose that pathway if, at best, it means paying millions in legal fees and, at worst, a massive damages award,” Charles Klein, the attorney representing Hikma, said during arguments.

“The risk of liability and what it could do to a generic, I would think, would be pretty significant,” Jackson said while questioning Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart.

Some experts were concerned that a decision for Amarin could impact other generic products, not just pharmaceuticals.

“Drugs are obviously sort of the poster child here, because they’re so expensive and people are very concerned about drug prices,” Duan said. “But this is not a case that’s specific about drugs. In that sense, it’s really a case about whether or not generic products can exist.”

Generic products can seriously save consumers. Store-brand foods cost up to 40% less than name brand items at Wegman’s and Stop & Shop, a 2022 CNET study found. Any savings go a long way — food prices rose 2.7% from March 2025 to 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor.

Justices are not expected to issue a decision in the case until near the of their term in early July, either to dismiss Amarin’s complaint or send it back to trial court in Delaware. 

Already, Stewart warned the court, generic manufacturers will have a “substantial disincentive” for entering the market and are holding off now pending the court’s decision.

“This is a real test for how we want to balance innovation versus affordability in this country,” John Murphy, CEO of the advocacy group Association for Accessible Medicines, said. “We need to make sure that balance is more appropriately favored for consumers.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision gutting the federal Voting Rights Act could upend American politics and trigger a new rush to redraw congressional districts.

The opinion released on Wednesday, in a case called Louisiana v. Callais, holds sweeping consequences for how states and local governments draw district lines at all levels of government, from Congress to school boards. 

Louisiana, whose congressional map is at the center of the case, may even suspend an upcoming primary election so state lawmakers can pass a new map. Other states are also weighing new gerrymanders, either this year or before the 2028 election. 

Gerrymandering refers to drawing political maps for the purpose of gaining some form of unfair advantage — whether partisan or racial or to help or hurt an incumbent or candidate.

Following the decision, Democrats are calling for Congress to pass new federal voting rights legislation, but President Donald Trump would likely veto it. Others are urging more radical changes, including expanding the size of the Supreme Court.

As the nation responds to the decision, here’s a States Newsroom look at the decision, what it means and what could happen next.

What is Louisiana v. Callais?

After the 2020 census, the Louisiana Legislature passed a congressional map that included one district where a majority of residents are Black. About a third of the state’s population is Black.

States typically draw new congressional lines once a decade following the census, though several states have pushed through new maps this year after Trump called on Republicans to maximize their political advantage heading into the midterm elections this November.

Black voters challenged the Louisiana map and an appeals court ordered lawmakers to pass a new map. The legislature in 2024 approved a map that includes a second district where a majority of residents are Black, also called a majority-minority district.

In response, a group of white voters sued over the new map, claiming it violated the U.S. Constitution and was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law and the 15th Amendment prohibits denying the right to vote on the basis of race.

The lead plaintiff in the case is Phillip Callais, hence the case’s name. The New York Times reported last year that Callais is a veteran who lives near Baton Rouge. 

The Supreme Court held its first oral argument on the case in March 2025. But instead of issuing a decision later that spring, the court held a second round of oral argument in October. 

At that time, comments by the conservative justices strongly suggested the court was interested in weakening the federal Voting Rights Act.

What is the Voting Rights Act and what role did it play in redistricting?

The Voting Rights Act, or VRA, is a 1965 federal law passed by Congress and signed by President Lyndon Johnson.

The law was designed to stop racial discrimination in voting and combat Jim Crow laws like literacy tests that Southern states used to prevent Black people from voting.

It contains several sections but the Supreme Court decision in Callais dealt with Section 2. That section prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race and other characteristics. In 1982, Congress expanded Section 2 to ban voting practices that have a discriminatory effect, whether or not the law was intended to discriminate.

Section 2 has acted as a ban on racial gerrymandering, or the practice of drawing districts to minimize the political influence of minority voters. Over time, that’s led to the creation of numerous majority-minority congressional districts.

Many of these majority-minority districts are located in Republican-controlled Southern states  but are held by Democrats. In the past, if states drew new maps to spread minority voters across several districts, they could face challenges in federal court under Section 2.

What did the Supreme Court decide?

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Louisiana’s congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. 

The court found that because the Voting Rights Act didn’t require Louisiana to create a second majority-minority district, the state didn’t have a compelling reason to consider race when drawing its map.

Under the court’s reasoning, Section 2 only applies when evidence supports a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred. In other words, lawmakers only violate Section 2 when they draw districts with the purpose of affording minority voters less opportunity because of their race.

The court’s majority opinion says “none of the historical evidence presented by plaintiffs came close to showing an objective likelihood that the State’s challenged map was the result of intentional racial discrimination.”

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by all of the court’s conservatives: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neal Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

The court’s three liberal justices — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented.

Why is the decision a big deal?

The decision empowers states to gerrymander in ways that break apart districts where a majority of residents are Black, Hispanic or belong to another minority group.

In 2019 the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts would no longer take cases about partisan gerrymandering. That’s where states draw maps to help a political party.

Because many majority-minority districts in the South are held by Democrats, the Callais decision gives Republican states the power to break apart these districts if they can show they are doing so for a partisan purpose.

“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote in a dissent.

In the short term, the decision means several Black Democrats in the U.S. House may lose their seats if states pass new maps either this year before the November midterm elections or before the 2028 election. At least one projection has pegged the potential losses as high as 19 seats.

The loss of even a few Black representatives would constitute the largest drop in Black representation in Congress since Reconstruction following the Civil War, according to an NPR analysis. 

In the long term, minority voters will have a more difficult time electing their preferred candidates if they are moved into majority-white districts. The decision also applies to state legislative districts, meaning the number of Black state lawmakers may drop as well.

What impact does the Voting Rights Act have after the ruling?

Not nearly as much.

The Supreme Court’s decision didn’t strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. But Kagan and other critics of the opinion say the protections once extended by Section 2 are effectively dead.

To block a map under Section 2, challengers will now have to show states intentionally discriminated against minority voters, a very difficult standard when states can say they drew maps for partisan advantage.

In a series of decisions during the past 13 years, the Supreme Court has also weakened other elements of the Voting Rights Act.

In 2013, the court effectively blocked preclearance, another major portion of the law contained in Section 5. Preclearance required states and local governments with a history of discrimination to obtain federal permission before making voting changes.

Preclearance applied to most Southern states and a handful of others. The justices didn’t strike down preclearance, but ruled that the criteria used to determine whether governments should be subject to preclearance was unconstitutional.

The law required districts that had voting tests in place in 1964 and had less than 50% turnout in the 1964 presidential election as eligible for preclearance. The court found that the criteria no longer made sense and were outdated. 

In theory, Congress could pass new criteria that would restore preclearance.

How are Republicans responding?

Republicans in Southern states are pushing for new maps that could hand their party more seats in the November elections — but also oust Black Democratic members of Congress.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, announced on Thursday that the state’s primary election, set for mid-May, would be paused. The suspension will give time for state lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional map to eliminate the state’s second majority-minority district.

“We are working together with the Legislature and the Secretary of State’s office to develop a path forward,” Landry said in a statement.

Florida lawmakers passed a new map hours after the court’s decision that could provide Republicans with up to four additional seats. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had introduced the map earlier in the week and had cited Callais in urging lawmakers to act.

In Tennessee, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican running for governor, called on state lawmakers to pass a new map. Prominent Republicans in Georgia said the state should pass a new map.

Not all Republicans are pushing for immediate action. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said that while she supports the Supreme Court’s decision, the state wasn’t in a position to hold a special session to redistrict.

How are Democrats responding?

Democrats have condemned the Supreme Court’s opinion and say lawmakers and the public should fight back.

Many Democrats say Congress should pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named after civil rights activist and Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, who died in 2020. The legislation would set new criteria for preclearance, seeking to restore the practice after the Supreme Court stopped it in 2013.

The U.S. House passed the measure in 2021, but it didn’t advance through the Senate. 

Enacting the measure remains extremely difficult. If Democrats retake control of Congress in the November elections, Trump would almost certainly veto the measure. Republicans in the U.S. Senate would also likely block the bill, unless Democrats eliminate the filibuster.

Democrats are also weighing a new round of gerrymanders in blue states. While most attention has focused on Southern Republican states, Democrats can now also engage in racial vote dilution in states like California to secure additional U.S. House seats.

Some Democrats and opponents of the Supreme Court’s decision are pushing for other responses. 

They include expanding the size of the court from nine justices to dilute its conservative majority, implementing term limits for justices, banning mid-decade redistricting or requiring states to use independent commissions to draw congressional maps.

“We must continue to fight for a democracy in which every vote counts, and in which every vote holds equal power, starting by banning mid-decade gerrymanders nationwide and establishing fair redistricting criteria,” Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, said in a statement.

But those changes would require federal legislation, giving Republicans the opportunity to stop the proposals through filibusters in the Senate or by Trump’s veto.

President Donald Trump on Thursday moved to capitalize on a U.S. Supreme Court decision weakening the federal Voting Rights Act as he urged one governor to gerrymander his state and praised another for suspending an approaching primary.

The court’s decision on Wednesday struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as unconstitutional and empowered other Republican states to break apart districts where most residents are Black for a partisan advantage.

The opinion could reinvigorate Trump’s push for states to redraw their maps to give Republicans an edge in the November midterm elections. The president’s party typically performs poorly in the midterms and Trump’s approval has fallen in polls, making Democrats hopeful they can retake the U.S. House.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and state Attorney General Liz Murrill announced on Thursday that the state’s congressional primary election, set for mid-May, would be suspended. The pause gives state lawmakers time to draw a new map aimed at ousting at least one, if not two, Black Democrats.

Trump thanked Landry on his social media platform, Truth Social, for “moving so quickly to fix the Unconstitutionality” of the state’s map. In a separate post, Trump wrote that he had spoken with Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who faces calls to immediately gerrymander the state.

“I had a very good conversation with Governor Bill Lee, of Tennessee, this morning, wherein he stated that he would work hard to correct the unconstitutional flaw in the Congressional Maps of the Great State of Tennessee,” Trump wrote.

A spokesperson for Lee didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The redistricting rush 

Historically, states draw new maps once a decade after each census but eight states have now broken that norm after Trump urged Republicans to gerrymander. 

Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah have drawn fresh GOP-leaning maps, as well as Florida, whose legislature approved a gerrymander hours after the Supreme Court’s decision. California and Virginia have enacted new maps favorable to Democrats. 

Before Wednesday, the redistricting war was essentially a wash. But the court’s decision gives Republicans more options to gain the upper hand this year, if states can move quickly. 

Alabama, Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee are among the red states with upcoming primaries where lawmakers could theoretically still act. In some states — like Georgia and Tennessee — top Republicans haven’t ruled out action. In others, like Alabama and Georgia, GOP leaders have ruled out or played down the possibility of action this year.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, urged states to gerrymander their maps before the midterm elections.

“I think all states that have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully and I think they should do it before the midterms,” Johnson told CNN on Thursday. 

Dems also talk gerrymandering

Democrats have also floated the possibility of additional gerrymanders — whether this year or ahead of the 2028 election. 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on social media after the court’s decision that she would work with the legislature to change the state’s redistricting process. New York currently uses a commission system to draw maps, limiting opportunities for partisan gerrymandering.

At a news conference hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus on Wednesday, Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, suggested she would support additional Democratic gerrymanders.

“It values partisan politics over discrimination,” Sewell said of the court’s decision. “It’s really, really, really — I mean, it takes us back. So to the extent it’s urging, it’s inviting red states to totally take away all of the Democratic seats and be totally red, it also encourages blue states to do exactly the same.”

Justice-elect Chris Taylor announced Wednesday that she's endorsing liberal Appeals Judge Pedro Colón in the 2027 Supreme Court election. Colón faces liberal Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette.

The post Justice-elect Chris Taylor endorses Pedro Colón in 2027 Supreme Court race appeared first on WPR.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision gutting the federal Voting Rights Act sent Black Democrats in the U.S. House reeling on Wednesday, as they confronted a new reality where Republicans could gerrymander some of them out of office and limit the ability of Black voters to elect candidates in the future.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus vowed to fight the court’s decision. They demanded fresh votes on federal voting rights legislation that has languished for several years and urged voters to turn out in the November election.

But facing a Republican-controlled Congress for at least the rest of the year and a Republican White House for at least the next two-and-a-half years, the prospect of major new voting rights legislation becoming law appears slim in the near term.

“It will pave the way for the greatest reduction in representation for Black and minority voters since the years following Reconstruction,” Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, said of the court’s decision, referring to the post-Civil War period in the South.

Republicans could ultimately secure up to 19 U.S. House seats nationally directly because of the Supreme Court’s decision, according to a projection by Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based progressive voting rights group, and the Black Voters Matter Fund, which advocates on behalf of Black voters. 

As of Aug. 4, 2025, Congress included 61 Black members of the House, including two delegates, and five senators, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Racial gerrymander

In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because it unnecessarily created a second district where a majority of residents are Black.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act had previously limited states from using maps that dilute the voting power of minority citizens. Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court’s three liberal justices, wrote in a dissent that the decision would now allow states to dilute the voting power of minority voters without legal consequences.

Republicans welcomed the decision, with many saying race should play no role in redistricting. President Donald Trump, informed about the ruling by reporters and told that it would help Republicans, exclaimed, “I love it.”

Florida lawmakers approved a new map within hours of the opinion. The proposal, offered by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this week, seeks to secure four additional House seats for Republicans. DeSantis had invoked the court’s decision, even before it was released, to push lawmakers to pass the new map.

GOP candidates and officials in other states urged state lawmakers to move quickly to redraw maps, even with primary elections approaching. Even if only a small number of states enact fresh gerrymanders this year, the Supreme Court decision will likely trigger another, bigger wave of redistricting over the next two years ahead of the 2028 election.

“The Court rightly acknowledged that the South has made extraordinary progress, and that laws designed for a different era do not reflect the present reality,” Alabama Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement.

Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a statement said the decision “restores fairness, strengthens confidence in our elections, and ensures every voter is treated equally under the law.”

The Supreme Court in 2019 allowed states to redraw maps for political advantage, ruling that federal courts would no longer adjudicate partisan gerrymandering cases. That previous decision, combined with Wednesday’s opinion, offers states a wide berth to draw maps that limit the voting power of minorities if they’re sold as politically necessary.

Bloody Sunday

Sewell represents a district that includes Selma, where the civil rights activist and future U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., along with other marchers, was beaten by state troopers in 1965 while walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an episode called Bloody Sunday. 

The beatings helped spur Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act later that year — the same law the Supreme Court weakened on Wednesday.

“The court just gave states permission to use partisan gerrymandering as a wholesale excuse to deny Black and minority voters a voice in our democracy,” Sewell said.

In Missouri, the Republican-controlled legislature earlier this year passed a map intended to oust Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who was Kansas City’s first Black mayor. The state Supreme Court is weighing a legal challenge that could keep the map from taking effect before the November election.

On Wednesday, Cleaver in a statement called the opinion “deeply disrespectful of the generations of African Americans and civil rights advocates who gave their freedom, their blood, and even their lives to make it possible.” 

Obama criticizes ruling

Former President Barack Obama condemned the decision as another example of how a majority of the current Supreme Court seems intent on “abandoning its vital role” in ensuring equal participation in American democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach.

“The good news is that such setbacks can be overcome,” Obama said in a statement. “But that will only happen if citizens across the country who cherish our democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers – not just in the upcoming midterms or in high profile races, but in every election and every level.

Several Democrats said Congress should pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a Democratic-sponsored measure that seeks to restore preclearance — a requirement that states with a history of discrimination obtain federal approval before making voting changes. The Supreme Court effectively halted preclearance in 2013.

The House, under Democratic control, passed the legislation in 2021 but it stalled in the Senate. Democrats could likely pass the bill again if they retake the House in November but would face a likely filibuster again in the Senate. Even if they managed to pass the bill, Trump would be virtually certain to veto it.

Rep. Cleo Fields, a Louisiana Democrat whose district was ruled an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, sought to place the court’s decision in a broader, historical context. 

Looking ahead to midterms

Recalling Louisiana’s Jim Crow past, he said the state used to require individuals to recite the Constitution’s preamble before registering to vote.

“If you tell me I’ve got to jump a certain height, I could probably do that. Tell me I’ve got to run a certain distance, I could probably do that, too. But if you tell me I have to be white to serve in Congress from Louisiana, I can’t do nothing about that — I need some help from my government,” Fields said, adding that’s why Congress needs to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the Supreme Court’s conservative majority “illegitimate” and said the opinion was unacceptable but not unexpected. 

While acknowledging the decision represents a setback, America has an opportunity to mount a comeback in the upcoming election, he said.

Jeffries, who is set to become speaker if Democrats retake the House in November, said one of the chamber’s first actions would be to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

“So we can end the era of voter suppression in America once and for all,” Jeffries said.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court appeared poised Wednesday to uphold the Trump administration’s efforts to end temporary legal protections for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. 

The decision could also affect several other lawsuits related to what is known as Temporary Protected Status that are pending in lower courts. The suits challenge the Trump administration’s procedures to terminate country protections, which have sharply raised deportation risks for more than 1 million immigrants. 

So far, the Trump administration has ended TPS destinations for 13 countries, out of 17 that were active at the start of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said that federal courts, under the law, cannot review the executive branch’s decision to end or extend a TPS designation.

“They challenge the very kind of foreign policy-laden judgments that are traditionally entrusted to the political branches,” Sauer said of TPS recipients who are suing to remain in the United States. 

But two lawyers, Ahilan Arulanantham, representing Syrians, and Geoffrey Pipoly, representing Haitians, argued that their clients could challenge a lack of proper procedure that then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem took in ending those TPS designations. 

That would include not undertaking a review of country conditions before making a determination, the lawyers said.

Most of the questioning came from the three liberal justices, who grilled Sauer and pressed him on Trump’s racist remarks disparaging Haitians.

The conservative justices, who hold a 6-3 majority, asked Sauer only a handful of questions, and seemed skeptical of Arulanantham and Pipoly’s argument, signaling that they may already agree with the Trump administration’s position that the courts cannot review TPS terminations. 

A decision is not expected until June or early July. Both cases would go back to the lower courts to continue on the merits argument. 

But if the Supreme Court agrees with the Trump administration, then TPS holders from Haiti and Syria could be subject to deportation. 

The effort to end TPS designation is part of President Donald Trump’s broader effort to curtail immigration and strip legal status for people, creating thousands of newly unauthorized immigrants in order to subject them to his mass deportation drive.

How TPS works

TPS is a humanitarian program that Congress created in 1990 to allow for temporary protections for nationals who hail from countries deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, disasters or other extreme circumstances. 

TPS holders must go through vetting to be approved for work permits and legal protections. Each renewal lasts from six to 12 to 18 months. 

Those determinations are up to the Department of Homeland Security secretary, who typically consults with the State Department to evaluate country conditions and determine if the status needs to be extended. Decisions would depend upon whether conditions are still unsafe for a migrant’s return.

Sauer argued that the courts cannot review that final decision, including procedural ones that lead up to it. 

Arulanantham contended that position is a “double edged sword.” Another administration could easily come in and a new DHS secretary could theoretically use TPS to give legal status to immigrants in the country unlawfully, and that decision would not be subject to review by the courts, Arulanantham said.

The TPS holders before the Supreme Court argue that Noem did not consult with the appropriate agencies, such as the State Department, before deciding to end TPS designation. They say she did not follow proper procedure — but they are not challenging that a decision to terminate a country can be reviewed. 

Arulanantham said with Syria, if Noem had reviewed the State Department’s report, which advises people not to travel to the country because of armed conflict, and still decided against renewing protections, that decision is not reviewable. 

“What is reviewable is whether she actually asks anything and gets any information about country conditions,” he said. 

Sauer said that legal argument was “meritless,” because the TPS “statute does not micromanage the degree of consultation with other agencies.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed Arulanantham why a challenge to the review of how a TPS termination is ended would even matter.

“If it’s just kind of a box-checking exercise, I mean, why would Congress permit review of the procedural aspect, when really what everybody cares about much more is the substance?” she asked.

Arulanantham said it’s “because Congress … and the millions of people who live with TPS, have some faith in government, and they believe that if there is consultation, the decisions will be better.”

He said, “Our view is that even if it comes back like a box-checking exercise, people will at least know that somebody talked to somebody else.”

Trump ‘racial animus’ cited

Pipoly argued that the ending of TPS for Haiti was based on racial animosity toward Haitians, pointing to the president’s own words where he referred to the Caribbean island as a “shithole.” 

“The true reason for the termination is the president’s racial animus towards non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular,” he said. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Sauer about those comments from Trump. 

“We have a president saying at one point that Haiti is a ‘filthy, dirty and disgusting s-hole country,’ I’m quoting him, and where he complained that the United States takes people from such countries, instead of people from Norway, Sweden or Denmark,” she said. “I don’t see how that one statement is not a prime example of … showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision.”

Sauer argued that none of those statements “mentions race or relates to race,” and instead the president was referring to “problems like crime, poverty, welfare dependence.”

In the lower court that blocked the Trump administration from ending TPS for Haiti, federal Judge Ana Reyes found that there was racial animosity in the government’s decision to end the humanitarian protections. 

This is not the first time Trump has tried to end TPS for Haiti — he did so in his first administration in 2018, but was blocked by the courts.

Haitian workers in the US

The day before Wednesday’s oral arguments, a handful of Democratic lawmakers gathered with domestic care advocates outside the U.S. Capitol to stress the importance of TPS workers. More than 20,000 Haitians work in healthcare, according to the immigration advocacy group FWD.us.

“At this moment, over 1 million people are at risk of being removed from their homes, separated from their families, having their lives uprooted because of Trump’s cruel and unlawful attempt to terminate their temporary protected status,” Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley said during the Tuesday press conference. 

Pressley said that thousands of TPS holders serve as essential workers, including one recipient from Haiti who took care of the congresswoman’s mother, who died from cancer.

“It was Haitian nurses who prayed over my mother, who sang songs to my mother, who oiled her scalp lovingly and braided her hair,” Pressley said. “Everyone who calls this country home benefits from TPS, and stands to be harmed by this termination.”

Pressley has led the bipartisan push in the House to approve a measure that would extend TPS for Haiti up to three years. 

Ten Republicans, including one independent who caucuses with the GOP, joined Democrats in approving the bill earlier this month. 

While it passed in the House, the legislation would need 60 votes in the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans. Additionally, if Congress managed to pass the bill, it would likely be rejected by Trump. 

“We are demanding the Supreme Court uphold the law, save lives and protect our communities,” Pressley said. “To send vulnerable families to countries like Haiti, Venezuela and Syria that are enduring horrific humanitarian crises is unconscionable, shameful, unlawful and preventable.”

State Appeals Judge Pedro Colón has entered the 2027 race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, becoming the second liberal candidate to launch a campaign for the court this month.

The post Liberal Judge Pedro Colón enters 2027 Wisconsin Supreme Court race appeared first on WPR.

A lawsuit seeking to throw out Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they’re unconstitutionally anti-competitive was dismissed Tuesday by a panel of three circuit court judges. 

The lawsuit was brought last summer by bipartisan business group Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy Coalition, represented by the progressive nonprofit Law Forward. 

For more than a decade, Wisconsin has been a national symbol of the effects of extreme partisan gerrymandering and Tuesday’s dismissal comes amid a effort by both major parties to redraw maps ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. 

A national mid-decade redistricting tit-for-tat started last year when Texas Republicans drew new maps, at President Donald Trump’s request, in an attempt to limit the number of Democrats in the House of Representatives. A number of other Republican states, including Missouri and North Carolina, followed suit. In response, voters in California and Virginia voted to change state laws to allow Democrats to re-draw their maps to minimize Republican seats. 

This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced a bill that would redraw his state’s maps to give Republicans four more seats. 

While both parties have drawn political maps to favor their own candidates, only congressional Democrats have proposed a bill that would ban partisan gerrymandering. In Wisconsin, state Democrats have long pushed for the adoption of a non-partisan redistricting commission. 

Wisconsin’s current congressional maps were adopted in 2021 by the state Supreme Court after Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans in the Legislature were unable to reach a deal on their own. When forced to weigh in, the Supreme Court instituted a “least change” rule that required any maps proposed to the Court to hew as closely as possible to the maps instituted by Republicans in 2011. The map the Court chose was proposed by Evers, a Democrat, but resulted in a heavily Republican congressional delegation, since they were drawn to adhere to the “least change” standard.

The 2011 political maps and the least change decision allowed Republicans to hold six of the state’s eight congressional seats. The state Supreme Court tossed out the state’s legislative maps in 2023 — which remained heavily gerrymandered under the “least change” standard — on the grounds that the shapes of the districts, some of which were broken into noncontiguous parts, were illegal. 

Over the years, the court system has heard a number of challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they are an illegal partisan gerrymander. A separate three-judge panel dismissed another lawsuit on partisan gerrymandering grounds late last month. 

Despite that dismissal, the Law Forward lawsuit argued that its claims were new and therefore deserved to be considered by the courts. The lawsuit argued that the maps were drawn to unfairly give incumbents of both parties an advantage, pointing to the fact that only one of the state’s congressional districts, western Wisconsin’s 3rd CD, is regularly decided by a single-digit margin. 

“After the Wisconsin Legislature adopted the 2011 congressional map, congressional races over the ensuing decade were, as intended, highly uncompetitive,” the lawsuit stated. “The Court’s adoption … of the ‘least change’ congressional map necessarily perpetuated the essential features — and the primary flaws — of the 2011 congressional map, including the 2011 congressional map’s intentional and effective effort to suppress competition.”

Republicans and their allies intervened in the case, arguing that it should be dismissed because the anti-competitive argument treads the same ground as the partisan gerrymandering claims the Court has already declined to hear. 

The three-judge panel, made up of Dane County Judge David Conway, Marathon County Judge Michael Moran and Portage County Judge Patricia Baker, agreed and dismissed the case, noting that the makeup of the state’s political maps is a question best left to the political branches of government, not the judicial system.

“Plaintiffs’ anti-competitive gerrymandering claims are functionally equivalent to partisan gerrymandering claims, at least for purposes of the political question analysis,” the judges wrote. “In a two-party system, partisan fairness and competitiveness are correlated: a more competitive map is typically a fairer map, whereas less competition usually means less partisan fairness. The objective of both theories is to change ‘the partisan makeup of districts,’ whether by achieving proportional representation, electoral competitiveness, or both.” 

Doug Poland, Law Forward’s director of litigation, said in a statement Tuesday that it’s disappointing the panel dismissed the case before it had the opportunity to hear evidence. He also said the panel’s ruling will be appealed directly to the Supreme Court. 

“This is the first anti-competitive gerrymandering case ever filed in Wisconsin courts, and it deserves to be heard,” Poland said. “We believe that the circuit court was wrong in concluding that anti-competitive gerrymandering is ‘functionally equivalent’ to partisan gerrymandering. They are different claims, based on different evidence, that target different ways of manipulating representation to the detriment of voters.”

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Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Pedro Colón announced Tuesday he’s running to replace retiring Justice Annette Ziegler on the Wisconsin Supreme Court next year. 

Colón, a former Democratic member of the state Assembly and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge, moved to Milwaukee from Puerto Rico when he was 10 years old. He was the first Latino elected to the Wisconsin Assembly and to sit on the state’s appeals court. 

He was appointed to the Milwaukee County Court by Gov. Jim Doyle in 2010 and then reelected three times. He was appointed to the District I Court of Appeals by Gov. Tony Evers in 2023. 

Colón said in a news release that his experience moving to Wisconsin and decades in the law make him qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. 

“I came to Milwaukee at ten years old, not speaking a word of English. I know what it feels like to stand before a system that was not built for you,” Colón said. “For 15 years on the bench, I have made sure every person who walks into my courtroom gets the same thing: a listening ear and a fair shot. That is exactly what I will do on the Supreme Court.”

Colón got his undergraduate degree from Marquette University and his law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife and has two daughters. 

He is the second liberal-leaning judge to enter the race to replace the conservative former Chief Justice Ziegler, who announced her plan to retire earlier this year. Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette announced her candidacy earlier this month. 

A liberal victory in 2027 would establish a 6-1 majority on the Court, leaving Justice Brian Hagedorn, who has occasionally been a swing vote and sided with the Court’s liberals, as the lone conservative on the bench.

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The U.S. Supreme Court could be ready to overturn a Missouri state court verdict that favored a man who sued the manufacturer of the popular herbicide Roundup for lacking any warning that the product carried a risk of cancer after oral arguments in the case Monday.

The arguments focused on whether states could enforce their own labeling requirements of pesticides, or whether federal law preempted any deviation among states. Members of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority emphasized the need for uniformity across the country.

The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the case in favor of Monsanto, the Missouri-based company that manufactures Roundup and has been owned since 2018 by German pharmaceutical company Bayer. The company faces thousands of lawsuits claiming exposure to Roundup increased a risk of cancer and that the company failed to warn consumers when it reasonably should have known of the risk.

Monsanto denies that the product causes cancer, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has consistently agreed.

John Durnell, a St. Louis resident, sued the company in 2019 claiming that exposure to Roundup over two decades led to his developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. A Missouri trial court awarded him $1.25 million, and appeals courts affirmed the ruling.

But the Supreme Court, which is the first federal court to hear the case, seemed inclined to protect federal supremacy. The EPA, which regulates labeling requirements for herbicides, does not require the kind of warning the Missouri jury said was appropriate.

Federal law typically trumps state law, which Monsanto and the Justice Department emphasized Monday. Industry groups across the economy tend to support federal supremacy because it saves companies from complying with 50 separate regulatory schemes across states.

‘Is that uniformity?’

An exchange between Ashley Keller, the attorney for Durnell, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whom President Donald Trump appointed in his first term, may hold the key to the court’s ultimate ruling.

Keller argued that Congress in the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, which governs herbicide use, did not include a clause to expressly say that the federal law would preempt any state claims.

There was no issue of a difference between state and federal law, Keller said. Instead, a particular jury decided a single case based on unique facts, he continued. Different juries in other cases may have decided differently.

But Kavanaugh seemed not to accept that argument. He rephrased a similar question several times, and, even as Keller objected, appeared to dismiss the idea that the Missouri verdict was compatible with a national standard.

“You think it’s uniformity when each state can require different things?” he asked.

Keller rejected that framing. 

“The label’s illegal in one state and legal in another state,” Kavanaugh responded. “That’s uniformity?” 

Keller said he didn’t agree with that premise either, saying the label is not illegal based on the state but based on the facts presented at trial and the jury’s interpretation.

“The label subjects you to liability in one state and does not subject you to liability in another state,” Kavanaugh continued. “Is that uniformity?”

“I don’t think it’s state by state,” Keller said. “I think it’s jury by jury.”

Paul Clement, a well-known conservative appeals lawyer, represented Monsanto in the case, and described Keller’s argument as chaotic. It would not just open up separate regulatory regimes in each state in the country, but subject manufacturers to liability based on the makeup of any particular batch of citizens on a state court jury.

“It’s worse than 50 states,” he said. “It’s every jury is a new day.” 

A host of agencies in countries across the globe have all done studies on glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, Clement said.

“It’s probably the most, like, studied herbicide in the history of man, and they’ve all reached the conclusion based on more data and the kind of expert analysis they can do that there isn’t a risk here,” he said. “You shouldn’t let a single Missouri jury second-guess that judgment.”

Liberal justices seek consumer protections

The court’s liberal justices spent more time questioning why states shouldn’t be allowed to enforce stricter regulations.

Justice Elena Kagan asked Principal Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris, who argued on behalf of the federal government in favor of throwing out the verdict against Monsanto, if she agreed with Clement’s argument.

Harris said she largely agreed, noting that 50 states setting up separate regulations on labeling pesticides would cause confusion.

But Kagan asked why uniformity should be a higher goal than safety, saying a certain state government might have a better understanding than the EPA.

“It does undermine uniformity, I appreciate that,” Kagan said. “On the other hand, if it turns out that they (state regulators) were right, it might have been good if they had an opportunity to do something to call this danger to the attention of the people while the federal government was going through its process.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also pointed out that the EPA only registers herbicides once every 15 years, meaning that states might have better information than the EPA, especially later in that cycle.

“Lots of things can happen in science in terms of developments about the product,” she told Clement. “So if the product can become misbranded because of new information, I guess I’m just wondering why you think that you couldn’t have a situation where it would be perfectly rational for either the EPA or the states to bring to the attention of that manufacturer this new information and process a claim related to it.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday appeared likely to allow law enforcement to continue seeking warrants for the location history of cellphones near crime scenes, even as the justices wrestled with how far the government must go to protect Americans’ privacy.

Some of the justices appeared to be searching for a middle ground during oral arguments in a case out of Virginia challenging what is known as a geofence warrant that was used to catch a bank robber. Several justices asked skeptical questions of both sides, though no one voiced explicit support for prohibiting such warrants altogether.

As smartphones have become ubiquitous, along with apps that track users’ movements, the high court is once again wading into how the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, applies in the digital era. The justices’ decision, of tremendous interest to state attorneys general, will shape how easy or difficult it is for investigators to sweep up location data.

Over the past two decades, geofence warrants have become a major tool of law enforcement. At a basic level, they allow police to identify phones within a geographic area for a certain period of time. 

The data can be tremendously valuable to investigators, offering a way to develop suspects in crimes where their identities aren’t otherwise known. Underscoring their importance, a broad bipartisan coalition of states has urged the justices to uphold the warrants.

But civil liberties advocates say geofence warrants ensnare people in digital dragnets, handing the government data on anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They argue that accessing data on anyone within a certain area — the geofence — amounts to a general warrant prohibited by the Constitution.

Summing up the high court’s uncertainty in Monday’s arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett told U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Eric Feigin, who was arguing in favor of law enforcement access to location data, that while he had described his opponent’s position as maximalist, “there’s a risk of the government’s position being maximalist the other way.”

“I was just going to say this seems very complicated from the user’s point of view, frankly,” Barrett said at a different portion of the argument.

Credit union robbery

The case before the Supreme Court, Chatrie v. United States, arises from a 2019 robbery of a federal credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. Okello Chatrie was convicted of armed robbery after surveillance footage showed the robber using a cellphone. A detective then obtained a geofence warrant directed at Google for devices within 150 meters of the credit union within an hour of the robbery.

Google initially provided anonymized data in response to the warrant. The detective then requested and received additional location data on nine users. Finally, the detective received de-anonymized information on three users, without obtaining an additional warrant.

While Google has since changed the way it stores location history data to limit geofence warrants, other apps and tech firms collect the data. Lawyers for Chatrie argue that geofence warrants open the door to the authorities requesting information on everyone at a sensitive location — perhaps an abortion clinic or a political convention — at a particular time.

“The warrant authorized the government to direct Google to search every single person’s account to find those people who were within the geofence. That is a general warrant,” Adam Unikowsky, a lawyer for Chatrie, told the court.

4th Amendment debate

The Supreme Court’s last major decision on 4th Amendment rights and phones came in 2018, when the justices ruled that law enforcement generally needs a warrant for location data derived from when phones connect to a cell site. That data is generated by just having a cellphone, and the justices found that a phone is now a basic element of participating in society.

By contrast, the Trump administration argues location history data isn’t protected by the 4th Amendment because users voluntarily share it with Google and other tech firms by turning on location tracking on their phones. Because the information was turned over with their consent, users have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

“Petitioner here is asking for an unprecedented transformation of the 4th Amendment into an impregnable fortress around records of his public movements that he affirmatively consented to allow Google to create, maintain and use,” Feigin said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s three liberal justices, argued that if the government can access location data without a warrant because Chatrie consented to sharing it with Google, then the government could obtain all sorts of other data shared with the company, such as photos and calendar entries.

“If this is consent, that means the government can seek those documents for any reason, not just the commission of a crime — or no reason, correct?” Sotomayor said.

“Correct. It would not be a search, so no search warrant would be required,” Unikowsky replied.

Red and blue states back geofence warrants

Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have filed a court brief arguing that geofence warrants can be more precise than many traditional investigative methods when supported by probable cause and appropriately tailored. In the brief, they urged the justices not to prohibit geofence warrants altogether.

State attorneys general across the political spectrum signed on to the brief. They include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Washington.

Geofence warrants can generate critical leads when the perpetrators of crimes are otherwise unknown, they wrote. When suspects are unknown but the suspected wrongdoing is linked to a specific place and time, location data provides one of the narrowest available tools for finding leads, the brief argues.

“This Court should make clear that the Constitution does not categorically ban those investigative methods,” the states’ brief reads.

Google brief

In a court brief, Google said geofence warrants result in invasive searches that are overbroad. Geofence searches, by their nature, have a high risk of sometimes sweeping in thousands of innocent users, the company said.

Even small geographic areas covering short periods of time can include hundreds of thousands of people, Google argued. Geofence parameters set by law enforcement often cover more ground than the location of the crime, with private homes, apartments, government buildings, hotels, places of worship and busy roads all included.

Lawyers for Google wrote that the company takes no position on whether the warrant in the Chatrie case complies with the 4th Amendment.

“But Google firmly believes that, based on the private nature of Location History data, law enforcement was required to obtain a warrant to access that data,” the brief says.

Orin Kerr, a Stanford Law School professor and one of the nation’s foremost experts on the 4th Amendment, predicted after the oral argument that the justices would likely rule that geofence warrants can be constitutionally drafted. 

However, he was uncertain whether the court would rule on whether the geofence search that identified Chatrie’s phone was a search under the 4th Amendment.

“They’ll probably say that geofence warrants have to be limited in time and space,” Kerr wrote on social media.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday will hear oral arguments on the Trump administration’s efforts to strip temporary legal status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, a move that could open them up to deportation.

The case has the potential to have an impact on multiple lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to end protections for more than 1.3 million immigrants from all over the globe with Temporary Protected Status, granted because they hail from countries deemed too dangerous for return. 

The effort to end TPS designation is part of President Donald Trump’s broader efforts to curtail immigration and strip legal status for people, opening them up to his mass deportation drive. 

“The decision will have the capacity to impact everyone with TPS,” José Palma, a coordinator for the National TPS Alliance, told reporters. 

Palma is a TPS recipient from El Salvador.

At the start of the second Trump administration there were 17 countries with a TPS designation. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended the status for 13 countries — Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.  

Noem argued that she determined the countries no longer met the threshold for TPS and that the designation was not in the interest of the United States.

The moves sparked multiple lawsuits from immigration advocates and TPS recipients. Lower courts have mostly blocked the terminations from taking effect, but it’s still resulted in loss of work authorizations, healthcare and deportations of some people with temporary status, Palma said.

In the TPS Haiti and Syria case before the justices, which was consolidated from two separate cases, lawyers argue that DHS did not follow proper government procedures in revoking the status. 

They also contend that the termination of a country destination was predetermined and motivated by racism, especially the targeting of Black immigrants such as Haitians. 

“The most damning evidence is President Trump’s own words, his own actions,” Sejal Zota, one of the attorneys on the Haiti TPS case, told reporters during a briefing. “During his last campaign, he falsely claimed Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of the people in Springfield (Ohio). And days later, after the pets comment, he promised to revoke Haiti’s TPS and send them back to their country.”

Even after the justices rule, the outcome of the cases is not final because both cases were in preliminary stages at the district court level before the Trump administration took the two cases to the Supreme Court, skirting the typical appeals courts. 

A ruling is expected in late June or early July, and then both cases would go back to the lower courts to continue on the merits argument. However, the practical effect, if the Supreme Court finds in favor of the government, would be that Haitians and Syrians would be potentially subject to deportation. 

History of TPS

Congress created TPS in 1990 and instructed the attorney general to consult with appropriate agencies, such as the State Department, to designate a country that is too unsafe to return to due to war, major disasters or other extraordinary circumstances. 

When Congress created DHS in 2002 – in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack – that authority was transferred over to the secretary of Homeland Security. 

A designation lasts six,12 or 18 months, and each recipient has to undergo a background check in order to remain in the U.S. and have valid work permits. Congress did not place any limits on how many times a country can be renewed for TPS, citing the potential for long-term conflicts like civil war.

Zota, one of the attorneys on the TPS case for Haiti, said the Trump administration has “attempted to reverse-engineer the facts to justify its politically … motivated decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS.”

She said the State Department has warned people not to travel to Haiti due to gang violence, kidnappings, terrorist activity and civil unrest. 

The State Department advises people if they still plan to travel to Haiti to make sure to leave dental records and DNA in case their family needs to identify their remains. 

“Our own government has conceded the peril there,” Zota said. 

Haiti was first given a TPS designation after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The designation was renewed multiple times due to the disaster and then again after Haiti’s president was assassinated by gangs in 2021, leading to further destabilization, violence and food shortages. 

What is the role of the courts?

Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney arguing on behalf of TPS holders from Syria, said one of the questions the justices will be presented with is whether the courts have any role in making sure that the federal government complies with making TPS decisions, such as making sure that the country determinations are made in coordination with relevant agencies. 

He added that the Trump administration is not coordinating with the State Department to evaluate country conditions, which he argues is not following proper administrative procedure.

“You’ll hear a lot of talk in the Supreme Court argument about whether we’re challenging a determination with respect to TPS decisions, and that’s because there’s a provision of the TPS statute which says there’s no judicial review of any determination with respect to a termination of TPS,” Arulanantham said to reporters.

Arulanantham is also the co-director at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

He said that the Trump administration is arguing about that TPS statue and whether the courts have any say.

“We think it means that the courts are not allowed to second-guess decisions about whether countries are safe,” he said. “The government thinks it means that … the courts aren’t allowed to look at any of this and that any decision they make, any rule that they set for TPS, is immune from review entirely.”

In briefs to the high court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer has argued that the lower courts should not interfere with the DHS secretary’s decision.

Arulanantham said there’s a “huge amount” at stake in the Trump administration’s argument about review of TPS designations. 

“If the government is correct, then they can terminate TPS without conducting any country conditions review at all,” he said. “They can do it for reasons that are completely arbitrary.”

Other TPS decisions

This is not the first time a TPS case has appeared before the justices during the second Trump administration. 

The high court twice allowed the Trump administration to remove TPS for more than 300,000 of the 600,000 Venezuelans in the program. Because those decisions were made on an emergency basis, the justices did not give any legal reasoning before sending the cases back to the lower courts. 

Federal judges have often cited the lack of opinion from the high court when issuing a ruling to block the Trump administration from ending TPS designation from other countries. 

Wednesday’s oral arguments will be the first time the justices will hear a TPS case and give a decision on their ruling about the Trump administration’s move to revoke protections. 

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday handed Michigan’s Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel a victory, offering a unanimous decision that laid to rest a yearslong debate over whether her case to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline should be heard in state or federal court. 

In an 14-page opinion penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court held that Enbridge had missed its 30-day window to have the case removed to federal court, with the Canadian energy company making its request 887 days after receiving Nessel’s initial complaint. 

The company’s Line 5 pipeline has been a long-running concern for tribal nations and environmentalists in the region, with Nessel calling it a “ticking time bomb” for the Great Lakes.

Running from northwestern Wisconsin into Sarnia, Ontario, the 645-mile long pipeline passes through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with a four-mile segment of dual pipelines running through the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet. The pipeline carries up to 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids through the straits each day.

“Today’s decision honors the truth that the Straits of Mackinac are not a bargaining chip and reaffirms what Tribal Nations have always known – we have the right and the responsibility to protect the Great Lakes,” Bay Mills Indian Community President Whitney Gravelle said in a statement. “The Supreme Court saw through Enbridge’s delay tactics and upheld the rule of law. This is a victory for our waters, our treaty rights, and the next seven generations who depend on the Great Lakes for life itself.”

In an emailed statement, Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy noted that Nessel’s case has been stayed, awaiting the results of an appeal in another court case, which Enbridge filed against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources after they revoked the company’s easement to operate Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac.

The United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan in December ruled that the move was unenforceable, with the Pipeline Safety Act of 1992 preempting states from placing safety regulations on interstate pipelines. Whitmer has appealed the decision.

“Setting aside the procedural decision, the fact remains that the safety of Line 5 is regulated exclusively by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration,” Duffy said, noting that the agency has not identified any safety issues that would warrant its shutdown.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Customs and Border Protection tariff refund system went live Monday, marking what small business advocates call a “complex” first step for entrepreneurs to recoup $166 billion in import taxes accrued under President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs, which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in February. 

Importers and brokers can now upload a detailed list of each tariff paid under Trump’s now illegal order to charge duties under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA. 

Customs officials estimate 330,000 importers paid the duties. Refunds are expected within 60 to 90 days, according to CBP.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision earlier this year found Trump’s steep global tariffs exceeded his presidential powers.

Following the high court’s decision, U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Richard Eaton ordered the government to stop charging the tariffs and establish a refund system.

A handful of small businesses and Democratic state attorneys general led the legal challenge to Trump’s 2025 “Liberation Day” tariffs. 

Small business owners angry, frustrated

States Newsroom documented the experiences of several small businesses across the U.S. who faced increased costs following Trump’s change in international trade policy.

Now many are experiencing a “confusing mix of relief,” Richard Trent, executive director of Main Street Alliance, told States Newsroom in an interview Monday.

Trent, whose organization advocates on behalf of small businesses said “our entrepreneurs, many of whom were angry that they had to pay tariffs in the first place, and were frustrated by the back-and-forth over the last year, opened up the portal this morning only to see that it had crashed. It just feels like the uncertainty just keeps popping up.”

Trent, who spoke to “five or six” businesses Monday morning who experienced technical issues, said the portal was up and running again by afternoon.

Customs and Border Protection did not confirm for States Newsroom whether the system had crashed, but rather provided a written statement.

“U.S. Customs and Border Protection has developed a new tool, the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE), to efficiently process refunds, pursuant to court order, for importers and brokers who paid IEEPA duties,” according to an agency spokesperson. 

“CBP has issued guidance to the trade community to help them prepare to use the new CAPE tool. Importers and brokers can visit CBP’s website for resources and step-by-step guidance,” the statement continued. 

Monday’s launch is the first part of a four-step process in refunding the taxes paid by American businesses of all sizes.

Trent said the “complex” process is yet another hurdle for small operations.

“This is progress, but it’s not yet justice,” Trent said in an earlier statement Monday. “Small business owners should not have to jump through hoops to get back money they never should have had to pay. We need a refund process that is simple, accessible, and fast.”

Guides for refunds

The Liberty Justice Center, the libertarian legal advocacy group that represented small business plaintiffs before the Supreme Court, has established the Tariff Equity Refund Resource for America. The platform offers online guides for how to properly submit documentation for the refunds.

“We took this fight all the way to the Supreme Court on behalf of small businesses, and we’re not stopping now,” Sara Albrecht, chair of the Liberty Justice Center, said in a statement Monday. “We are a nonprofit law firm — our only goal is to help businesses recover every dollar they are owed, not to take a percentage of it. At a time when others are looking to profit off confusion, we are making this process clear, accessible and free.”

Trump declared international trade a national emergency just over a year ago, citing a trade imbalance on imports and exports between the United States and several other countries. The president imposed a 10% blanket tariff on all global imports and steeper double-digit taxes on products from some of the top U.S. trading partners.

The president delayed and changed the rates on numerous occasions. 

Following his Supreme Court loss, Trump imposed a new round of universal, temporary tariffs under a separate statute. The Liberty Justice Center is again representing small businesses in court to fight the new import taxes.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court was scheduled to hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case brought by a conservative group that could determine whether sensitive information about people judged mentally incapable of voting is a public record. 

It’s the second time justices are hearing arguments in this case, which previously had been caught up in conflicting opinions issued by two of the state’s appeals court districts. It also became an attack point used by liberal Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor in the most recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which she won by 20 points. Her opponent, Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, wrote an opinion supportive of the conservative group’s position, which was unusual because it contradicted another appeals court ruling in a separate case on the same issue.

The key question before justices on Tuesday is whether the information in Notices of Voting Eligibility should be publicly accessible. Courts send those forms to election officials after a judge in a guardianship case determines someone is not competent to cast a ballot. State law says “the fact that an individual has been found incompetent … is accessible to any person who demonstrates to the custodian of the records a need for that information.”. 

The Wisconsin Voter Alliance is a conservative group led by Ron Heuer, who worked on the state’s partisan review of the 2020 presidential election results conducted by former Justice Michael Gableman. The alliance filed lawsuits in 13 counties arguing that access to the information about voters who have been judged incompetent would show inconsistencies with the state’s voter rolls. Gableman’s investigation ended ignominiously, and he’s now facing a three-year suspension of his law license for his unprofessional conduct.

Heuer said he “never expected” the high court to take the case back on appeal. 

“We are well within our bounds here to have access to that data,” he said.

In 2023, a review conducted by the Dane County clerk at the request of Wisconsin Watch found 95 individuals who previously cast ballots despite a court declaring them unable to do so, though administrative error and people moving to different municipalities explained many of those cases, rather than any kind of intentional voter fraud. Election officials and state lawmakers previously identified a need for a legally binding process to track adjudicated incompetent voters, though no bill has passed to fix the holes in the system. 

The Wisconsin Elections Commission also conducted a review of adjudicated incompetent voters, which was completed in 2023, and communicated with local register in probate offices to make sure records were accurate ahead of the 2024 elections, said spokesperson Emilee Miklas. 

Miklas declined to comment on the Wisconsin Voter Alliance case, but noted the commission has previously asked for legislative changes to better track those voters. 

Republicans this session proposed a bill that would have required circuit courts to notify the Wisconsin Elections Commission by email about a determination of voter incompetency and then the commission would have had three business days to update that person’s voter status and notify a local clerk. The bill passed the Assembly in November, but died after it did not receive a hearing in the Senate. Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a bill with similar language and other provisions during the 2023 legislative session because other elements in the bill could cause ballots with minor errors to be discarded. 

Disability advocates remain concerned that the details on Notices of Voting Eligibility forms, if made public, can put already vulnerable populations at risk of exploitations or scams. The forms sought by the WVA can include a person’s name, address and date of birth. 

“We already know more about them from the fact that they’ve been found incompetent than you know about the average person you pass on the street,” said Polly Shoemaker, an attorney with the Wisconsin Guardianship Support Center. “So there’s that, and then there’s the fact that it’s these folks who can be very easily taken advantage of.”

How we got here

The high court last held oral arguments in September 2024 following conflicting opinions issued in separate but similar cases in the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals and the Waukesha-based 2nd District. 

Justices in January 2025 only reached an opinion on the 2nd District’s decision, which was released after the 4th District’s ruling was published as precedent. The high court did not rule last year on whether the Notices of Voting Eligibility are accessible as public records.

The 4th District in November 2023 affirmed a Juneau County decision that the sensitive information about those voters is not open for public disclosure. A judicial committee on Dec. 21, 2023, published the 4th District’s opinion as precedent. 

Then, on Dec. 27, 2023, the 2nd District ruled that the WVA had a right to the records, overturning a Walworth County court’s decision and clashing with the precedent set in the 4th District case. Lazar and Appeals Court Judge Shelley Grogan made up the majority with liberal Judge Lisa Neubauer dissenting. 

The 2nd District revised the appeals decision in March 2025 after the state Supreme Court’s opinion, and the WVA petitioned for justices to hear the case again. 

But the 2nd District opinion, written by Lazar, became a point of attack in the 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court race. In the only debate ahead of the election, Taylor used the case to support her claim that Lazar “brought an extreme right-wing agenda to the bench.”

“She has refused to follow precedent,” Taylor said. “She ruled to release personal, private voting information to a right-wing group that tried to overturn our election. Thank goodness she was reversed by the state Supreme Court.”

In addition to the Wisconsin Voter Alliance case, the high court was also hearing oral arguments on Tuesday in another case on whether a child who was injured during birth has the right to pursue legal action against a doctor. 

Legal case over access to sensitive voter data returns to Wisconsin Supreme Court is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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