Supreme Court rules on Voting Rights Act, striking down Louisiana map

The Supreme Court declared Louisiana's addition of a second majority-Black congressional district an unconstitutional racial gerrymander on Wednesday, a 6-3 decision along ideological lines that weakens a central provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Louisiana's legal saga thrust the state into the center of conservatives' push to curtail Section 2 of the landmark voting law, which has long enabled advocacy groups to force new majority-minority districts.

The decision does not strike down the provision entirely. Justice Samuel Alito cast it as an "update" to the framework that has governed Voting Rights Act cases for decades, while the liberal justices in dissent called it a "demolition" of the law...