Legal Docket: Voting maps, EPA overreach, and visa deadlines

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 5th day of May, 2025. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Today, a Legal Docket triple-header. We’ve had a spate of really big cases, and we’re going to move fast today in an effort to catch up. Our first case, Louisiana v Callais.

The state of Louisiana finds its legal position on voting rights between a rock and a hard place.

The rock is the Constitutional requirement not to draw voting maps that focus too much on race. Doing so would violate the 14th Amendment—specifically its equal protection clause.

EICHER: But the hard place is the Voting Rights Act: Ignoring race would potentially violate Section 2 of that landmark law.

So what’s the state to do? For one thing: Look to precedent. The Supreme Court has already ruled that race can be a consideration, it just can’t be forever. Something Justice Brett Kavanaugh brought up during oral argument in our first case this morning.

KAVANAUGH: On equal protection law, we've, of course, said… that race-based remedial action must have a logical endpoint, must be limited in time, must be a temporary matter, of course in school desegregation and university admissions….What --how does that principle apply to Section 2?

Section 2 aimed to stop racial discrimination in voting. But it doesn’t expressly guarantee outcomes.

REICHARD: Still, back in 1986, the Supreme Court laid down a test in a case called Gingles. If an ethnic minority group is large, compact, and politically cohesive, it might be entitled to a district that gives the minority group a good chance to elect its preferred candidate.

Now fast forward to Louisiana after the most recent census in 2020. It revealed that a third of the state’s population is black. But only one of its six congressional districts contained a majority of black voters.

EICHER: So, a group of black voters sued and won. A federal court ordered Louisiana to draw congressional-district boundaries in such a way as to create a second majority-black district.

The state complied—but the execution produced an odd result: congressional district six. It’s a 250-mile-long diagonal stripe that cuts from Shreveport in the northwest down to Baton Rouge in the south, stringing together distant black communities into a single district.

REICHARD: Chief Justice John Roberts wasn’t impressed with the design:

ROBERTS: How, I mean, if you look at CD6, what does ‘reasonably compact’ mean? I mean, it's --it's a snake that runs from one end of the state to the other. That --I mean, how is that compact?

In the next election, 2024, Republicans won four seats to the Democrats’ two. That was a shift from five-to-one GOP to four-two.

EICHER: That brought a new lawsuit. Phillip Callais and 11 other plaintiffs claiming the new map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Saying it violates the Equal Protection Clause.

Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga explained the state’s dilemma:

AGUINAGA: Louisiana would rather not be here….We would rather not be caught between two parties with diametrically opposed visions of what our Congressional map should look like. But this has become life as usual for the states under this Court’s voting cases. And our fundamental question today is: How do we get out of this predicament?

REICHARD: He found an ally in Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who emphasized that Louisiana had been acting under a valid federal court order.

JACKSON: I mean, It existed. And if it existed, then it seems to me there is a good reason for Louisiana to have followed it.

EICHER: But not every justice saw it the same way. The lower court’s order was only preliminary—it hadn’t ruled on the merits—so it wasn’t final. That raised a question: Was it wise for the state to use a not-yet-final order as the basis for drawing race-conscious districts?

Still, the core of the Catch-22 remained. Here’s Justice Sonia Sotomayor:

SOTOMAYOR: I'm sorry. Then there's no way to comply with Section 2.... it’s a vicious cycle they can’t get out of.

REICHARD: Lawyer Stuart Naifeh represented a different set of plaintiffs, led by longtime civil rights advocate Press Robinson. He is a trailblazer in Louisiana’s civil rights movement. He and others argue the current map ensures fair representation for black voters and complies with federal law. So, the two-district map is necessary:

NAIFEH: This court has been clear that states have breathing room to make reasonable efforts to comply with the Voting Rights Act....later…. And breathing room ensures that courts don’t unnecessarily intrude on the legislative domain simply because the state is attempting to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Naifeh argued the lower court got it wrong. He said it treated Louisiana’s effort to follow the Voting Rights Act as inherently suspect—as if simply trying to comply with the law meant the state had bad motives. That, he warned, would create confusion for every state trying to draw legal maps. It could backfire and create more confusion, not less.

EICHER: The core legal question here is the one we mentioned at the beginning: Can a state draw a map based on one court’s view of the Voting Rights Act—without violating the Constitution’s guarantee of equal treatment for all?

REICHARD: And hovering over the whole thing is chaos: lawsuits stacking up, maps changing year to year, voters not knowing which district they’re in. The process is exhausting. And expensive.

EICHER: The political stakes? Huge. Republicans hold the House by only a few seats. Flip one or two, and the balance of power shifts. So the fight over Louisiana’s map isn’t just a legal battle—it could tip the balance of power in Congress.

REICHARD: On to another consolidated case, Oklahoma v EPA and EPA v Calumet. These cases are going to sound a little dry, but they do hit close to home: Clean air. Electricity costs. And how far federal agencies can go.

The issue is venue. As in: where should lawsuits against EPA be heard?

EICHER: Congress did try to spell that out in the Clean Air Act: If an EPA rule is nationwide, the case goes straight to the D.C. Circuit. If it’s regional, it belongs in a local federal appeals court.

Simple enough—until EPA starts blurring the lines.

So what happens when EPA bundles a group of regional decisions together and calls it national? Justice Clarence Thomas:

THOMAS: Uh, Mr. Stewart, are there any limits to aggregating different claims thereby determining venue in D.C.?

REICHARD: Translation, is EPA gaming the system to get friendlier courts?

Justice Neil Gorsuch asked what changed, besides the EPA’s bundling tactic. The small refineries who say they were wrongly denied rule exemptions want to fight that out in courts closer to home. The Fifth Circuit agreed, but the EPA didn’t and appealed to the Supreme Court.

Justice Gorsuch seemed to lean in the agency’s direction:

GORSUCH: By gosh, I should hope EPA applies a consistent statutory interpretation across the country. How can that be a basis for venue? ….Venue is supposed to be easy to determine at the outset of the case.

EICHER: But Justice Jackson brought the focus back to Congress and its original intention: Local facts go local, national rules go national.

JACKSON: The venue provision appears designed to send challenges turning on local facts to local circuits, and national challenges to the D.C. Circuit.

REICHARD: The lines remained murky. Justice Gorsuch pressed:

GORSUCH: What simple rule would you have us apply here?

EICHER: In the related case Oklahoma v. EPA, the fight is over the so-called “Good Neighbor” rule—an EPA attempt to cut down on smog crossing state lines. Oklahoma calls it overreach … EPA says smog is no respecter of boundaries—border crossing is a national issue.

REICHARD: Lawyer Misha Tseytlin warned the agency is gaming the system:

TSEYTLIN: EPA essentially says that if it packages separate actions in a single --in a single Federal Register notice, subject to an ill-defined sham exception, it can always get into the D.C. Circuit.

That tactic could cut states and local plaintiffs out of their home courts and stack the deck.

It’s a messy statute, and the Supreme Court has a chance to lay down a workable rule that everyone from state governments to small refineries hopes for.

EICHER: Last case, number three. This one is Riley v Bondi—that’s the new attorney general, already in a named case at the high court. It touches on tourist visas and deportation and will turn on the definition of deadlines.

REICHARD: Orlando Riley overstayed his tourist visa back in the 1990s. Years later, after convictions for drugs and firearms, he landed in prison. During the pandemic, he received early release.

EICHER: But waiting outside the prison gates were immigration agents to give him a ride home: his actual home, in Jamaica. He was being deported.

Riley said he feared for his safety if returned, but the Board of Immigration Appeals turned him down and signed the removal order.

REICHARD: He tried appealing that, but now the question is whether he did so too late. The law gives him 30 days. But 30 days from when: (a) 30 days from the date of the removal order, or (b) 30 days from the time he received it? The government says (a), Riley says (b).

EICHER: And now for two decisions handed down last week:

The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in favor of a Coast Guard reservist, saying federal employees called to active duty during a national emergency are entitled to full differential pay—no strings attached. The decision could affect thousands of service members in civilian government jobs.

REICHARD: And in a 7–2 ruling, the Supreme Court sided with the government in a Medicare funding dispute. This one dealt with who counts as “low-income” for the purpose of paying out bonus reimbursements. The court held that only hospital patients actually receiving Supplemental Security Income payments during their stay qualify. The decision narrows the pool of eligible hospitals—and left the challengers without extra funds. And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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