Callais-Driven Vacatur: Section 2 Redistricting Injunctions Must Be Reassessed Under a Strong-Inference-of-Intent and Race–Politics Disentanglement Framework

Introduction

In Coakley Pendergrass v. Secretary, State of Georgia (consolidated with related appeals), the Eleventh Circuit reviewed a district court judgment permanently enjoining Georgia’s Secretary of State from using several enacted redistricting maps (SB 2EX, SB 1EX, and HB 1ES) in future elections after the district court found the maps violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”), 52 U.S.C. § 10301, on a vote-dilution theory. The plaintiffs included individual voters and civic/faith organizations; the United States intervened in support of the plaintiffs.

The key issue on appeal became procedural but consequential: whether the district court’s Section 2 analysis—performed under the longstanding Thornburgh v. Gingles framework—could stand after the Supreme Court’s intervening decision in Louisiana v. Callais substantially modified how Section 2 must be evaluated, particularly regarding the relationship between race and partisanship and the constitutional grounding of Section 2 remedies.

The Eleventh Circuit’s disposition is “NOT FOR PUBLICATION,” but it is still an important window into how the circuit will operationalize Callais in pending and future Section 2 redistricting litigation.

Summary of the Opinion

The Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court’s judgment and remanded for reconsideration under the updated Section 2 framework articulated in Louisiana v. Callais.

The panel reasoned that Callais, issued after briefing and long after the district court’s judgment, “changed the existing understanding” of vote-dilution cases. Because Callais “expressly amended” (though did not overrule) the Gingles framework and raised new, fact-intensive questions (e.g., disentangling race and politics; evidentiary focus on present-day intentional discrimination), the district court should apply the new law in the first instance.

The court declined plaintiffs’ request for a narrower remand that would preserve portions of the existing judgment, explaining that the Gingles inquiry is deeply fact-bound and the relevant facts may take “new shapes” under Callais.

Analysis

Precedents Cited

• Louisiana v. Callais, 608 U.S. ___, 146 S. Ct. 1331 (2026)
  This is the controlling intervening precedent and the engine of the remand. The Eleventh Circuit treated Callais as a landmark clarification of Section 2’s constitutional “guardrails” and as an express modification of the classic Gingles approach. Central teachings highlighted by the panel:
  • Section 2’s remedial power to compel race-based districting properly fits Congress’s Fifteenth Amendment authority only as enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment’s ban on intentional racial discrimination, so Section 2 liability arises “only when the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.”
  • Plaintiffs must “rul[e] out” politics as the explanation for district lines; if “either politics or race could explain” the contours, plaintiffs have not met their burden.
  • Gingles is “updated” such that illustrative maps for the first precondition cannot use race as a districting criterion and must satisfy all legitimate state districting objectives, including political goals.
  • The second and third preconditions require analysis controlling for party affiliation (to show racial bloc voting is due to race rather than partisanship).
  • The totality-of-circumstances inquiry must center on present-day intentional racial discrimination; older discrimination and generalized “effects of societal discrimination” receive less weight.
  Because the district court decided the case without these requirements, the Eleventh Circuit deemed vacatur/remand the appropriate course.
• Thornburgh v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986) and Allen v. Milligan, 599 U.S. 1 (2023)
  The panel framed the pre-Callais landscape as one in which courts operated under the decades-old Gingles framework (as discussed in Allen v. Milligan). The opinion’s significance lies in its recognition that Callais did not discard Gingles but “expressly amended it,” meaning prior analyses grounded in the older approach may be incomplete or incorrectly framed under the new standards.
• Robinson v. Ardoin, 605 F. Supp. 3d 759 (2022)
  Cited as part of the procedural and factual backdrop of Callais, illustrating how a successful Section 2 vote-dilution challenge can lead to a court-ordered second majority-minority district, which then triggers constitutional challenges by non-minority voters (the posture that reached the Supreme Court in Callais). The Eleventh Circuit used this history to underscore why Callais directly affects the remedial posture of Section 2 litigation (i.e., when a remedy requires intentional use of race).
• Alexander v. S.C. State Conf. of the NAACP, 602 U.S. 1, 9-10 (2024)
  Quoted (through Callais) for the proposition that plaintiffs must rule out politics as a competing explanation; if “either politics or race could explain” a district’s contours, the burden is unmet. The Eleventh Circuit treated this as central to Georgia’s appellate argument (race vs. partisanship) and to the need for remand.
• Rucho v. Common Cause, 588 U.S. 684 (2019)
  Cited (again via Callais) to establish that partisan advantage is a constitutionally permissible, race-neutral districting objective that courts must treat like any other permissible aim. This principle amplifies the remand’s practical stakes: under Callais, Section 2 plaintiffs must disentangle race from partisanship to avoid intruding on a state’s legitimate political choices.
• Powell v. Sch. Bd. of Volusia Cnty., 86 F.4th 881, 883 (11th Cir. 2023) and United States v. Republic of Honduras, 75 F.4th 1288, 1289 (11th Cir. 2023) (en banc)
  These cases support the court’s procedural choice: when an intervening Supreme Court decision materially changes the governing law, remand is routine to permit the district court to apply the new standard first.
• Comparelli v. Republica Bolivariana De Venezuela, 891 F.3d 1311, 1315 (11th Cir. 2018) and Callahan v. United States Dep't of Health & Hum. Servs. through Alex Azar II, 939 F.3d 1251, 1266 (11th Cir. 2019)
  These authorities provide the doctrinal scaffolding for why the Eleventh Circuit would not decide the newly relevant, fact-sensitive issues itself. The opinion treats Callais as generating “several questions” the district court did not address and emphasizes that such fact-intensive matters should be handled “in the first instance” by the trial court.
• Post-Callais remand practice in other cases
  The panel aligned its approach with the Supreme Court’s and other circuits’ post-Callais handling:
  • State Bd. of Election Comm'rs v. Miss. State Conf. of the NAACP, No. 25-234 (U.S. May 18, 2026) (Order)
  • Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v. Howe, No. 25-253 (U.S. May 18, 2026) (Order)
  • Ala. State Conf. of the NAACP v. Sec'y of State for Ala., No. 25-13007, 2026 WL 1649570, at *1 (11th Cir. June 8, 2026)
  • White v. State Bd. of Election Comm'rs, No. 25-60506, Dkt. 52-2 (5th Cir. May 11, 2026)
  • Order, Nairne v. Landry, No. 24-30115, Dkt. 386-1 (5th Cir. May 7, 2026)
  These citations reinforce that vacatur/remand is becoming the standard procedural response for pending Section 2 cases decided pre-Callais.

Legal Reasoning

The court’s reasoning is driven by the interaction of three propositions:

1. Callais is an intervening change in governing law.
   It materially changes what Section 2 plaintiffs must prove (and how), including heightened attention to intentional discrimination in inference form, and an explicit requirement to separate racial explanations from partisan ones.
2. The existing judgment rests on an older understanding of Section 2 litigation.
   The district court applied the then-prevailing approach derived from Gingles and the Senate Factors. But Callais reorients the analysis—particularly by narrowing when race-based districting can be compelled and demanding party-controlled proof for the second and third preconditions.
3. Appellate courts should not do first-instance factfinding under a new test.
   Because the revised Gingles inquiry is fact-intensive and because the record may need to be re-evaluated (or supplemented) to address race–politics disentanglement and present-day intentional discrimination, the district court is the proper forum to apply Callais initially.

The panel also made a key remedial choice: rather than attempting to “pick out” which parts of the district court’s analysis might remain valid, it vacated the judgment wholesale and remanded. The rationale is that Gingles is an integrated framework; changes to preconditions and totality-of-circumstances can reshape the significance of facts across the entire analysis.

Impact

Although procedurally limited to vacatur and remand, the opinion signals several practical effects for Section 2 redistricting litigation in the Eleventh Circuit:

• Re-litigation under a more demanding proof structure. Plaintiffs will likely need new or revised expert evidence to (a) control for party affiliation in polarization analyses and (b) demonstrate that proposed illustrative districts satisfy legitimate state districting objectives—including political objectives—without using race as a criterion.
• Greater defensive power in “race vs. politics” arguments. Because Callais emphasizes that states may pursue partisan advantage and that plaintiffs must rule politics out as an explanation, defendants can more forcefully argue that challenged maps reflect permissible politics rather than impermissible racial vote dilution.
• Shift in the “totality” inquiry toward present-day intent. The deemphasizing of older discrimination and generalized societal-effects evidence may narrow the types of background proof that carry decisive weight, increasing focus on contemporary legislative context and indicia supporting a strong inference of intentional discrimination.
• Procedural precedent for pending cases. The decision aligns the Eleventh Circuit with a broader post-Callais pattern: vacate and remand rather than “patch” older Section 2 rulings on appeal.

Complex Concepts Simplified

• Section 2 / vote dilution: A claim that an election system (here, district maps) weakens minority voters’ ability to elect candidates of choice, even if the law is not facially discriminatory.
• Gingles preconditions: The traditional threshold showings in many Section 2 districting cases—(1) a feasible compact majority-minority district, (2) minority political cohesion, and (3) majority bloc voting usually defeating the minority’s preferred candidates. After Callais, these showings must be made in ways that avoid race-based line drawing in illustrative maps and that control for party affiliation in cohesion/bloc-voting analyses.
• “Disentangling” race and politics: When voting patterns correlate with both race and party, Callais requires plaintiffs to show that race—not politics—explains the relevant districting choices and electoral outcomes for Section 2 liability.
• “Strong inference” of intentional discrimination: Callais ties Section 2’s constitutionality to enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment’s ban on intentional racial discrimination, requiring circumstances that strongly suggest intentional discrimination, even if an express finding of intent is not always required.
• Vacated and remanded: “Vacated” nullifies the prior judgment; “remanded” sends the case back for further proceedings. Here, it means the district court’s permanent injunction is undone, and the district court must re-decide the Section 2 question using the new Callais framework.

Conclusion

The Eleventh Circuit’s decision establishes a clear operational rule for cases in the pipeline: when an intervening Supreme Court decision—here, Louisiana v. Callais—materially revises the governing Section 2 standards, the proper appellate course is to vacate prior Section 2 judgments and remand for first-instance application of the updated framework.

Substantively, the opinion underscores the post-Callais reality that Section 2 vote-dilution litigation now turns more explicitly on (1) race–politics disentanglement, (2) party-controlled polarization proof, and (3) a totality inquiry centered on present-day intentional racial discrimination—changes likely to reshape how redistricting challenges are pleaded, proven, and defended going forward.