The Fourteenth Amendment says equal protection. It doesn’t say equal protection with exceptions.
A former federal prosecutor named Joyce Vance wrote about the Louisiana redistricting case this weekend, and I’ll give her credit: she understands the stakes. The Supreme Court may announce its decision in Louisiana v. Callais as early as this Friday, and Vance correctly identifies it as one of the most consequential cases this term. Where she goes wrong—completely, fundamentally wrong—is in thinking colorblind redistricting is the problem rather than the solution.
Vance explains that Louisiana drew a map creating two congressional districts where Black voters make up the majority. White voters challenged it, arguing that drawing districts by race violates the Constitution. Vance seems to think this is outrageous. I think it’s the Fourteenth Amendment working exactly as intended.
What Equal Protection Actually Means
I carry a pocket Constitution and I’ve read those words hundreds of times. The Fourteenth Amendment says no state shall deny any person “equal protection of the laws.” Not equal-except-when-drawing-maps. Not equal-unless-one-group-needs-extra-districts. Equal. For everyone.
Vance describes something called “packing and cracking,” which she says Louisiana historically used to limit Black voting power. I’ll take her word for it. But the solution to past racial discrimination can’t be more racial discrimination. The solution is to stop looking at race entirely. That’s what colorblind means. If Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act conflicts with the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection, the Amendment wins. That’s basic constitutional law.
The Founders Were Very Clear
Here’s what people like Vance don’t understand about the men who wrote this country’s founding documents. They believed in individual rights. Not group rights. Not racial rights. The idea that the government would sort citizens into racial categories and draw political boundaries around them would have horrified the Founders. George Washington didn’t fight a revolution so bureaucrats could count how many Black people live on which side of a highway.
Yes, I’m aware some states did bad things a long time ago. But we fixed that. We passed the Voting Rights Act. We elected a Black president—twice. At some point you stop looking backward. The Founders understood this. It’s right there in the Fourteenth Amendment, which they wrote. Or—which was written later, during Reconstruction. But the principle is the same one they believed in. Individual liberty. Colorblind justice.
Democracy, Not Gerrymandering
Vance warns that ruling for the challengers could “radically alter existing maps across the country,” leading to Republican majorities in the House for a generation. She presents this like a threat. I present it as democracy. If you draw maps without racial preferences and one party wins more seats, that means more people in more places prefer that party. That’s not gerrymandering. That’s an election.
What nobody on Vance’s side will admit is that the current system is the discriminatory one. When the government draws a district so one racial group can elect “the candidate of their choice”—Vance’s phrase—it’s saying voters of that race all think alike. All want the same candidate. How is that not a racial stereotype? How is sorting citizens by skin color not exactly what the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits?
I’m an HVAC technician. I don’t sort my customers by race before I fix their furnaces. The government should do the same with districts. As I’ve written before, the Constitution means what it says. Equal protection. No asterisks.
I’m just a guy with a pocket Constitution and a twenty-three-year-old business. But I can read. And this week, the Supreme Court might finally read it the same way I do.
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