On May 12, 2026, Democracy Docket and The Guardian reported that the Supreme Court's April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais — which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and struck down Louisiana's two-majority-Black-district congressional map — relied on factually incorrect data in Justice Samuel Alito's opinion. Alito wrote that Black voter turnout now exceeds white voter turnout, using that as a justification for eliminating the requirement to prove intentional racial discrimination in voting rights cases.
The error is methodological. Alito compared 'total population over the voting age of 18, regardless of voter eligibility' instead of comparing eligible voters. The voting-age population includes people who are not actually eligible to vote: incarcerated individuals, people with felony convictions in states that disenfranchise them, non-citizens, and people who are not registered. Black Americans are disproportionately represented in the first three categories due to documented disparities in the criminal justice system and citizenship status. Including those ineligible voters in the denominator artificially inflates the denominator for Black populations and makes Black turnout look higher than it actually is.
University of Florida voting expert Michael McDonald flagged the error to The Guardian: 'If I wanted to manipulate the numbers in a way that was favorable to the government's interest, I would be using voting age population.' When properly accounting for ineligible voters, white voter turnout significantly exceeds Black turnout. Recent data from the Brennan Center and the Union of Concerned Scientists shows the racial turnout gap has widened, not narrowed, since the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision that gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
The consequence: Alito used the faulty data to justify eliminating the proof-of-intentional-discrimination requirement, effectively removing the protections in the Voting Rights Act that Congress had constructed specifically to address documented historical racial discrimination. The data error is not a marginal point — it is the empirical claim that the legal conclusion rests on. The post-Callais state-by-state map redrawing (Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio, Florida 24-of-28, Alabama eliminating both majority-Black districts, Louisiana suspending its primary, Trump's 'vote twice' directive) is the operational consequence of a SCOTUS ruling whose factual foundation is now publicly identified as wrong.
Correction (September 30, 2026): this entry dated the Supreme Court's Louisiana v. Callais decision to May 1, 2026. The opinion says it was decided April 29, 2026; the date has been corrected.