Voting rights activists protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court as the court prepares to hear arguments in a case challenging Louisiana’s congressional map in Washington on Wednesday, October 15, 2025. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared ready to limit how a key part of the Voting Rights Act long aimed at protecting equal opportunity for racial minority voters is applied to the drawing of state election maps.
During oral arguments in a complicated case challenging the drawing of a second majority-black district in Louisiana, the court’s conservative majority suggested race may have improperly predominated as a factor in its creation.
At the same time, it was not clear whether a majority of the court was prepared to issue a more sweeping ruling that any use of race as a factor in redistricting is unconstitutional.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has long been a guardrail against states “packing” Black voters into districts and “cracking” communities of color into other districts with an aim of diluting their electoral influence.
Courts that have found a violation of Section 2 then order states to redraw their maps, with an eye on race, to ensure minority voters are given fair chance at political participation.
The law does not require proof of intent to discriminate — prohibiting any discrimination in effect — but several conservative justices suggested that plaintiffs should have to show at least some possibility of intent, a tougher standard to meet.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who could be the key vote in the case, voiced particular concern about the indefinite use of race to draw maps compliant with Section 2.
“This court’s cases in a variety of contexts have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes for a long period of time, decades in some cases, but that they should not be indefinite and should have an end point,” Kavanaugh said.
“What is not grounded in case law,” replied Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which is defending Louisiana’s map, “is the idea that an entire statute should somehow dissolve simply because race may be an element of the remedy.”
The court’s longstanding precedents have said that race cannot be a primary motivating factor when drawing congressional districts under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, but they also grant states have breathing room to consider race in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
The court most recently upheld Section 2 in a 2023 decision.
“What Section 2 does is to say where the effects [of a congressional map] are discriminatory such that … African Americans here are not being given the same voting opportunities as white people are, then a remedy is appropriate,” Justice Elena Kagan told Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga. “That remedy doesn’t have to be race-based, but sometimes it is race-based in order to correct the racially discriminatory situation that exists.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson most vigorously defended the legacy of Section 2 and its use to create two majority-black districts in Louisiana, describing the Civil Rights-era law as a “tool” to identify racial disparities.
“It’s like a tape measure that we’re looking [at] as to whether or not certain circumstances exist, and those circumstances that Congress is worried about – unequal access to electoral opportunity,” she said. “That’s why it doesn’t need a time limit, because it’s not doing any work other than just pointing us to the direction of where we might need to do something.”
Justice Samuel Alito said outright that he believed lower courts did not correctly apply the Supreme Court’s precedents around Section 2 to the maps at issue in Louisiana.
“There’s a serious question about whether the Black population within the district in question in the illustrative map was geographically compact,” he said, referring to one of the legal requirements for a VRA-compliant map.
A decision in Louisiana’s favor could, at the very least, require the state to redraw its map under more race-neutral criteria ahead of the 2026 midterm election. The two majority-black districts are represented by Democrats.
A broader conclusion in the case could upend congressional maps nationwide, potentially triggering the redrawing of race-neutral districts in multiple states and in turn putting minority representation at risk in legislatures nationwide.
Nelson argued that a further rollback of the Voting Rights Act would be “catastrophic.”
“If we take Louisiana as one example, every congressional member who is Black was elected from a VRA opportunity district,” she said. “We only have the diversity that we see across the south, for example, because of litigation that forced the creation of opportunity districts under the Voting Rights Act.”
The court is expected to release a decision before the end of its term in June 2026. How quickly it releases its ruling could determine whether or not states will have sufficient time to redraw maps — if necessary — before midterm voting begins.
(WASHINGTON) — The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) encouraged federal employees across the government — including at the Departments of Labor, Justice and Education — to create out-of-office email messages denouncing “Democrat Senators” for causing the government shutdown, multiple sources confirmed to ABC News.
In addition to the public statements on federal websites blaming the “radical left” for the shutdown, out-of-office automatic replies from the Department of Labor said the following:
“Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse in appropriations I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume,” the text of an email template provided to furloughed Department of Labor employees said.
Department of Labor email text
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) provided the following template language to establish employees’ out-of-office notifications.
“Furloughed Employees: Thank you for contacting me. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse in appropriations I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume,” the text read.
A template for essential federal employees, which the government refers to as “expected” employees, used similar language. Federal employees within the Departments of Justice and Education told ABC News they also received messages with similar language.
Excepted Employees: Thank you for contacting me. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. I am only permitted to perform work that, by law, may continue to be performed during a lapse in appropriations. Therefore, I may not be able to respond to your message at this time. As soon as funding is restored, I will return your message.
The approach appears to differ with each agency. Some federal departments did not send out any out-of-office email guidance.
However, multiple furloughed employees at the Department of Education report their out-of-office replies were automatically reset to mimic the language above – without their permission.
“They changed our out-of-office message… [They] did it after everyone left,” one department of education staffer told ABC News. “[I’m] so pissed,” they said.
The employee added, “We as career government employees need to be neutral when carrying out our jobs. This is such bull—-.”
Several federal workers, including the education department staffer, expressed concern to ABC News that adding the messages to their email accounts would violate the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities during their official duties.
The education department employee, furious about the message, stressed that federal workers are supposed to “serve all people of this country.”
The employee continued, “That [automatic reply] message is what anyone seeking assistance from a government worker is going to see.”
Similarly, when emailing the White House press office recently, ABC News received an automatic response that read, “Due to staff shortages resulting from the Democrat Shutdown, the typical 24/7 monitoring of this press inbox may experience delays… as you await a response, please remember this could have been avoided if the Democrats voted for the clean Continuing Resolution to keep the government open.”
The education department’s press office is also using the nearly identical automatic reply that OMB had provided to the Department of Labor. However, some automatic replies from individual press officers within the agency said that due to a “lapse in appropriations,” they would attempt to reply if it is allowable as an “excepted activity.”
Department of Education press office email text
“Thank you for contacting the press team. On September 19, 2025, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5371, a clean continuing resolution. Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations. Due to the lapse in appropriations, we are currently in furlough status. We will respond to emails once government functions resume,” the text read.
In addition, when submitting a request for comment at the State Department, an automated message was sent to ABC News that stated, “Thank you for your inquiry. Please note that responses may be delayed due to the government shutdown caused by congressional Democrats.”
A State Department official told ABC News that some staffers who had been furloughed had similar messaging in their automated “out of office” replies, blaming the furlough on democrats.
And on its website, under a bright red banner, the State Department notes that website updates will be limited due to the “Democrat-led” shutdown, seemingly in line with messaging seen on websites across agencies in Washington.
The political messaging is exceedingly rare coming from the State Department, which for decades has conducted itself as a largely apolitical entity with career-based staff who typically remain nonpartisan. Meanwhile, scores of federal employees are expected to be fired as a result of the shutdown by the end of the week, administration officials said.
(NEW YORK) — A federal judge on Sunday blocked the Trump administration from deporting hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children from the U.S. to Guatemala.
A federal judge had temporarily blocked the administration from removing the minors and set an emergency hearing for 3 p.m. Sunday, but U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan moved the hearing to 12:30 p.m after the court was notified the Guatemalan children were “in the process of being removed from the U.S.”
“The Court ORDERS that the Defendants cease any ongoing efforts to transfer, repatriate, remove, or otherwise facilitate the transport of any Plaintiff or member of the putative class from the United States,” Sookananan wrote. “The putative class includes all Guatemalan unaccompanied minors in Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement custody as of 1:02 AM on August 31, 2025, the time of the filing of the Complaint, who are not subject to an executable final order of removal,” the order says.,
In an ongoing hearing, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign said it is “possible” that one flight has taken off but has returned. However, he said all of the children covered in the lawsuit are still in the custody of the United States and that planes on the ground will not take off in light of the order.
An attorney representing the children said that he’s aware that the children have not been deplaned and are in Harlingen and El Paso, Texas.
In court filings, attorneys accuse the Trump administration of attempting to repatriate more than 600 unaccompanied Guatemalan minors in coordination with the Guatemalan government in violation of laws that prevent such moves without giving them the opportunity to challenge the removals.
Unaccompanied minors are migrants under the age of 18 who have come to the country without a legal guardian and do not have legal status. The children in question in the lawsuit are all reportedly in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
In a statement, the National Immigration Law Center, which filed the lawsuit, said the Trump administration is denying the Guatemalan children from being able to present their case before an immigration judge.
“It is a dark and dangerous moment for this country when our government chooses to target orphaned 10-year-olds and denies them their most basic legal right to present their case before an immigration judge,” said Efrén C. Olivares, vice president of litigation at the NILC. “The Constitution and federal laws provide robust protections to unaccompanied minors specifically because of the unique risks they face. We are determined to use every legal tool at our disposal to force the administration to respect the law and not send any child to danger.”
In another court filing, NILC said that after it attempted to inform the government that it had filed a motion for a temporary restraining order, they learned shelters in South Texas had been “notified to prepare Guatemalan children in their custody for discharge.”
“Upon information and belief, ICE agents and their contractors have started attempting to pick up Guatemalan unaccompanied children from shelters in South Texas to transport them to the airport for potential removal from the United States as soon as the early morning of Sunday, August 31, 2025,” NILC said in the filing.
The lawsuit was filed on Saturday after legal service providers received notices from the Office of Refugee Resettlement that children in their program have been identified for reunification. In the notice, the agency said that court proceedings for children identified by the agency “may be dismissed.”
“ORR Care Providers must take proactive measures to ensure UAC are prepared for discharge within 2 hours of receiving this notification,” the notice said.
In one of the notices submitted in court filings, ORR has informed certain attorneys for unaccompanied minors that the “Government of Guatemala has requested the return of certain unaccompanied alien children in general custody” to be reunited “with suitable family members.”
In the statement, NILC said that because most Guatemalan children in U.S. custody are indigenous and many speak languages other than English or Spanish, they are more vulnerable to “being misled by officials looking to deport them.”
One of the children represented in the case is a 10 year old indigenous girl who speaks a rare language.
“Her mother is deceased and she suffered abuse and neglect from other caregivers,” the complaint says.
