Amicus Brief on the Fifteenth Amendment in Louisiana v. Callais

Another ELB contributor has entered the Callais fray. Today, I filed an amicus brief in support of the Robinson appellants in this fall’s blockbuster voting rights case, Louisiana v. Callais . You can find my amicus brief here . Thanks to Rakesh Kilaru , Dan Epps , Allison Walter , and the paralegal team at Wilkinson Stekloff LLP for help with the brief.

Drawing on my scholarship about the Fifteenth Amendment, the amicus brief makes three arguments. First, as originally understood, the Equal Protection Clause did not apply to voting rights. Rather, it was the Fifteenth Amendment that enfranchised Black men nationwide and granted Congress robust enforcement authority. Thus, the Fifteenth—not the Fourteenth—Amendment is the constitutional touchstone for the fight against rac