The Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday urged American corporations to condemn efforts to dilute Black voting strength, as Southern states eliminate congressional districts where most residents are Black.

The CBC’s attempt to mobilize the business community comes as Black representation in Congress potentially faces its most severe threat since the end of Reconstruction following the Civil War. But some business leaders have taken a friendlier tone with President Donald Trump, who backs the gerrymandering.

A U.S. Supreme Court decision in April, in a case called Louisiana v. Callais, sharply weakened the federal Voting Rights Act, which had blocked states from breaking apart majority-minority districts. It limited the use of race in redistricting, prompting several Southern states to advance new maps targeting these districts, which are mostly held by Black Democrats.

“These actions are not routine political exercises,” the letter reads. “They are coordinated efforts to silence Black voices at the ballot box and strip communities of representation in American democracy.”

The message is addressed to more than 200 corporations and business groups that signed on to a 2021 letter in support of voting rights, as well as an unnamed number of other corporate leaders. Among the signatories were Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Intel, Microsoft, Nike, PepsiCo, Starbucks, Target, Tesla and Unilever USA. 

That letter called on Congress to update the Voting Rights Act, including changes that would restore the federal government’s ability to review changes to election and voting laws in states and local governments with a history of discrimination, a practice called preclearance that the Supreme Court effectively halted in 2013.

On Tuesday, the CBC said those companies should issue individual or joint public statements opposing efforts to dilute Black voting strength and dismantle protections in the Voting Rights Act.

The lawmakers also want companies to report on corporate political spending and relationships connected to attacks on voting rights and “discriminatory redistricting schemes.” Companies should accept an invitation to participate in a national gathering alongside civil rights leaders and advocates to discuss voting rights and Black political power, the lawmakers wrote.

The letter asks businesses to respond by June 9.

“Five years ago, corporations across America publicly affirmed that democracy, racial equity, and voting rights matter. Today, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision, those commitments are being tested in real time,” Rep. Yvette Clarke, a New York Democrat who chairs the CBC, said in a statement. 

“Corporations that have profited from Black consumers, relied on Black workers, and benefited from Black communities cannot remain silent while Black political representation is dismantled in plain sight,” Clarke said. “Silence in this moment is not neutrality — it is complicity.”

Corporate leaders warm to Trump

But political attitudes in parts of corporate America, especially among tech firms, have shifted since 2021.

When businesses signed the July 2021 letter, they were acting after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, and the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. Six years later, some titans of American business have taken a more conciliatory approach to Trump and the Make America Great Again movement.

Elon Musk, who leads Tesla, spearheaded the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE, initiative in 2025 that resulted in the firings and layoffs of thousands of federal workers. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has spoken positively about the president. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, called Trump “more mature” in his second term.

Trump has also led a push against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. In March, the president signed an executive order targeting DEI practices by federal contractors. The directive followed another anti-DEI order in January 2025 that encouraged the private sector to “end illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.”

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Callais, some Republicans have portrayed eliminating majority-minority districts as a constitutional imperative. The current districts should be tossed because they were drawn with their racial makeup in mind, they say.

“I don’t think race should be used to help a person because of his race, and I don’t think race should be used to harm a person because of his or her race,” Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiania Republican, said at a Senate hearing on racial gerrymandering last week.

Rapid remaps

Since the release of the Callais decision on April 29, Florida and Tennessee have changed their maps and Louisiana is expected to follow soon. South Carolina lawmakers tried but failed to advance a new map and Alabama has taken steps to implement a 2023 gerrymander after the Supreme Court lifted a lower court order that had blocked it.

A panel of three federal judges on Tuesday issued a new order halting the Alabama map, which would likely force out one of the state’s two Black Democratic members of Congress if enacted. The judges found that the map was racially discriminatory, even in light of Callais. 

Alabama has appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.

“I applaud the three-judge panel for upholding the rule of law and reaffirming that racial discrimination has no place in our redistricting process,” Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat who also signed Tuesday’s CBC letter, said in a statement.

“While we know that this legal battle is far from over, today’s ruling sends a clear message: Black voters in Alabama cannot and will not be silenced.”

When the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Texas’ gerrymandered congressional map to take effect in December, its conservative majority wrote that a lower court had “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign” when it blocked the map more than three months before the election.

Now, the Supreme Court is the one upending elections.

For the past two decades, the Supreme Court has advanced the idea that federal courts should not order major changes close to an election to limit voter confusion. Over time the doctrine, first articulated in the 2006 case Purcell vs. Gonzalez, became known as the Purcell principle. 

But election law experts and one of the court’s liberal justices say the Supreme Court is wielding — or disregarding — the principle unevenly in ways that aid Republicans.

In recent weeks, the Supreme Court has effectively allowed last-minute election changes in Southern states that hold major consequences for what districts voters are assigned to and the future of Black political representation across the region.

These Republican-controlled states are racing to redraw congressional maps to eliminate majority-Black districts, many of which have elected Black Democrats to Congress. The gerrymandering rush has come even with early voting underway in some states.

Wilfred Codrington III, a professor of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, who has studied the Purcell principle, said limiting voter confusion is common sense. But after that general idea,  the principle “just falls apart” because the Supreme Court has never answered questions raised by the doctrine — like how close to an election is too close.

“The court has not thought through them and it seems like when the court applies them, they’re being applied in partisan ways,” Codrington said, about questions the doctrine raises.

April ruling OK’d redistricting

After the high court gutted the federal Voting Rights Act in Callais, a landmark decision on April 29 that found Louisiana’s map unconstitutional, it fast-tracked paperwork so the state could quickly redraw district lines. 

Voting had begun in the state’s congressional primary election, which Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended, discarding 42,000 votes already cast.

A majority of the court voted to immediately certify its decision instead of observing its typical 32-day waiting period. In a blistering dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the justices were disregarding their previous insistence that courts shouldn’t risk assuming political responsibility for a redistricting process that often produces hard feelings.

“There is also the so-called Purcell principle, which we invoked only five months ago to chide a federal district court for ‘improperly insert[ing] itself into an active primary campaign,’” Jackson wrote. “The Court unshackles itself from both constraints today and dives into the fray. And just like that, those principles give way to power.”

The conservative justices on May 11 then cleared a path for Alabama to move toward implementing a Republican gerrymander that state lawmakers approved in 2023 but was blocked by a lower court. Their decision came a little more than a week before the state’s primary election. 

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has called an August special primary election for some of the state’s congressional districts.

“The United States Supreme Court’s decision is plain common sense and enables our values to be best represented in Congress,” Ivey said in a statement.

‘Like it doesn’t exist’

The Supreme Court’s actions this spring stand in stark contrast to its December decision to allow Texas’ gerrymander to take effect. After President Donald Trump urged GOP states to redraw their maps for partisan advantage, Texas was the first state to respond, enacting new lines that could help Republicans pick up five seats.

A three-judge district court panel ruled against the map, finding that it was racially gerrymandered. The Supreme Court paused the panel’s decision, finding that the panel likely made serious errors and that the district court was “causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections” amid the campaign season.

That language echoed the Purcell decision, which found that an appeals court had erred in blocking an Arizona law requiring a photo ID to register to vote. The Supreme Court’s unsigned opinion cautioned that court orders affecting elections can cause voter confusion. 

“As an election draws closer, that risk will increase,” the 2006 opinion said.

Nearly 20 years later, the Supreme Court made no mention of Purcell in its Callais opinion, which dropped like a political bomb across the South. Since the decision, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee have either enacted new maps or are seeking to do so ahead of the November midterm elections.

Mark Johnson, a Kansas City-based lawyer with a long history of working on election litigation, noted that Callais was argued at the Supreme Court twice, first in March 2025 and again in October. The justices then waited a long time before releasing their decision, he said, adding that if they didn’t realize the implications of their ruling they were “asleep at the wheel.”

“That’s why the Callais case is so disturbing, because a Supreme Court that has by and large followed Purcell just acted like it doesn’t exist,” Johnson said.

Court legitimacy at stake

Several high-profile observers of the Supreme Court have been unsparing in their criticism of the justices’ approach. 

Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and a foremost expert on the court, wrote in an online post that the court’s recent decisions “fatally undermine” the animating purpose of the Purcell principle.

“The Court’s own interventions are now wreaking havoc—and a majority of the justices either don’t think it’s their fault, or don’t care that it is. Either way, they don’t seem to mind the inconsistency—in a context in which it’s having the remarkably coincidental effect of benefiting Republicans,” Vladeck wrote.

Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, wrote on social media that the Supreme Court in Chief Justice John Roberts’ hands “has become a chaos agent in elections.”

Public support for the Supreme Court was dropping prior to Callais. An August 2025 Pew Research Center survey found 48% of Americans hold a favorable view of the court, a 22-percentage point drop from August 2020.

In the wake of the decision, Democrats have renewed their calls for court reform. Some have proposed term limits for the justices or expanding the size of the court to dilute its conservative majority. However, major changes are unlikely to become law while the U.S. Senate retains the filibuster and Trump remains in office.

For his part, Roberts has taken pains to paint the court as outside of politics. But at a judicial conference in Pennsylvania in early May, Roberts acknowledged the public thinks the justices are expressing policy preferences rather than interpreting the law.

“I think they view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do,” Roberts said, according to The Associated Press.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, another of the court’s conservatives, has drawn a distinction between federal courts ordering last-minute changes to elections and states making changes themselves — suggesting that courts shouldn’t necessarily thwart state legislatures that alter rules and procedures in the run-up to elections.

In a 2020 concurring opinion about a federal judge who had altered Wisconsin’s absentee ballot deadline amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Kavanaugh wrote that it was one thing for state legislatures to change their own election rules “in the late innings” and bear responsibility for unintended consequences.

“It is quite another thing for a federal district court to swoop in and alter carefully considered and democratically enacted state election rules when an election is imminent,” Kavanaugh wrote.

Chaotic campaign season

But voting rights advocates say Callais is unleashing a wave of voter confusion as Southern legislatures rush to gerrymander.

Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a map May 7 that divides the Memphis area among three congressional districts. The move splits a majority-Black district in Memphis represented by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a white Democrat. Cohen announced Friday he wouldn’t seek reelection.

The state’s primary election is scheduled for Aug. 6.

“This is a year where we’re already in the cycle and they’re going to have to redo everything they’ve already worked on because these districts are completely different,” Matia Powell, executive director of the voting rights group Civic TN, told reporters.

The Tennessee Democratic Party and several Democratic candidates, including state Rep. Justin Pearson, who is running for Cohen’s current seat, have filed a federal lawsuit against the map. They argue the new map will cause “significant voter confusion” and severely burden the right to vote.

Tennessee Republican Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti argues the Democrats have a solution in search of a problem. Tennessee lawmakers have provided more than $3.1 million to implement the new map and that state officials are already working to meet election deadlines, Skrmetti’s office wrote in a Wednesday court filing.

“At bottom, this suit is an invitation to play politics, not law,” Tennessee Senior Assistant Attorney General Zachary Barker wrote in the filing.

U.S. District Court Judge William Campbell, a Trump appointee, on Thursday declined to immediately halt the map.

The Supreme Court has sent states the message that “there are no rules” and that state legislatures are welcome to gerrymander Black representation at any point, said Anna Baldwin, voting rights litigation director at Campaign Legal Center, which has sued over Florida’s recent gerrymander.

And the way the court applies the Purcell principle encourages states to make changes close to elections — because courts are more reluctant to block them.

“The court is creating a perverse incentive structure that ultimately does make it harder for people who are trying to protect voting rights to prevail,” Baldwin said.

Thousands of people joined demonstrations in Selma and Montgomery on Saturday to protest redistricting by southern Republican state legislatures targeting Black Democratic members of Congress.

An afternoon rally in Montgomery that drew over 5,000 people featured politicians, activists and civil rights dignitaries as part of the All Roads Lead to the South campaign, aimed at organizing voters to offset the advantages Republicans may gain from redistricting.

“Our democracy is on the line,” said Victor Coar, who traveled from Birmingham to Montgomery. “Our rights are on the line. They are trying to take it all away. They are suppressing our vote, trying to keep us quiet, trying to silence our vote.”

The events on Saturday deliberately invoked the Civil Rights Movement in cities that featured some of its most famous moments, and came just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court targeted one of its major legacies. In Louisiana v. Callais, decided last month, the nation’s high court weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bans racial discrimination in voting and election laws, by saying plaintiffs challenging maps under Section 2 would have to prove intentional discrimination, a significantly higher standard than the prior one.

The court’s decision led Republican-controlled legislatures across the South to introduce redistricting legislation targeting Black majority districts. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Alabama to use a 2023 congressional map it had previously ruled racially discriminatory. Gov. Kay Ivey set special primary elections in four congressional districts for August, though plaintiffs in the state’s major redistricting case, known as Allen v. Milligan, have continued litigation. A federal court Friday set a hearing in the case for Friday.

Earlier on Saturday, faith leaders gathered at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma and offered prayers, criticisms of the Supreme Court and President Donald Trump and calls for voting rights protections for vulnerable communities.

After an hour, 400 people then marched silently from the church to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where civil rights protestors were attacked on March 7, 1965, an assault that eventually led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

“I know how important moments like these are, and I am here because I know that one of us can go far but we cannot go far enough,” said Rev. Cece Jones-Davis, who traveled from Washington, D.C. to participate in the day’s events, in an interview after the march. “It is going to take all of us, and so I am just here to add my voice to the collective.”

At the Montgomery rally, speakers spoke to several grievances aimed at the Trump administration and at the U.S. Supreme Court regarding voting rights, but also urged the crowd to have resolve during the current political climate.

Bernice King, the daughter of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and CEO of the King Center, harkened to the past as a rallying cry for the present.

“Today we return to the very grounds where my parents and freedom families stood, when Black voter registration was scarce, when discrimination was the norm, and when violence was the price for seeking dignity. Their sacrifice opened the door to the Voting Rights Act,” she said.

Now, she said, people are called once again to act.

“Because the recent Supreme Court rulings demand our presence,” she said. “It was not only a legal decision, it is a moral disgrace and a shameless assault on Black political power.”

Lawmakers from Alabama took the stage to urge the crowd to continue their efforts to mobilize the vote.

“Sometimes I wonder what would I have done if I had been present and alive during the movement,” said Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove. “Would I have marched? Would you have marched? Would I have participated in a boycott? Would you have done that? Would I be one of the lawyers who filed one of those lawsuits? Would I have been a freedom singer, singing and moaning for the movement like my grandfather? We are here to tell you, you don’t have to wonder anymore. This is our time, right now, and we are fired up and ready to go.”

Then Alabama’s congressional delegation and their colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives took the stage to rally the audience and to meet the moment.

Changing Alabama’s congressional maps will significantly threaten the re-election prospects of U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Mobile, and could eventually put U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, at risk.

“It is time to show up and show out, not just in one state capital, not just for one election but we need you to step up and show up for every one of our state legislators who are trying to get out the vote,” Sewell said.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, said that the freedom that we enjoy also requires responsibility.

“We also stand here with the understanding that the freedoms we inherited from our ancestors are not possessions that we hold, they are rights that we hold in trust,” he said to the crowd. “That we were given to be stewards of. A lot of people are drinking deeply from wells of freedom and liberty that they did not dig. They are eating from banquet tables prepared for them by their ancestors, sitting back, getting dumb, fat and ugly, and happy and comfortable. This is one of moments where we understand our blessings come with obligations.”

Khadidah Stone, one of the Allen v. Milligan plaintiffs, criticized Ivey’s decision to schedule the special session during an interview at Saturday’s event in Montgomery.

“I would really like those legislators to focus on the quality of life of Alabamians,” Stone said. “We have a lot of rural hospital closures, we have the highest maternal mortality rate in the country, 50,000 Alabamians just lost SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits, and most of the recipients are the elderly and children.”

Figures said after the rally that he was “inspired by what we see.”

“It is an incredibly humbling experience to see thousands come out and, in essence, help defend my seat, and defend Congresswoman Terri Sewell’s seat, so we can’t help but be overwhelmed by gratefulness and humility by what we are seeing, and encouraged because we think this is going to carry over until November,” he said.

Figures, however, said that he felt there were factual differences between the Callais case and the Milligan case, and expressed confidence that the Milligan plaintiffs could still win.

“The dispute with our district goes all the way back to the 2020 census, and the original maps that the state Legislature redrew, and the three-judge panel, two of whom were appointed by Trump and one by (Ronald) Regan originally, they found that the state had engaged in intentional discrimination in how they drew those maps.”

Several of those who attended the afternoon rally criticized attempts by the various legislatures to reconfigure their district maps.

“It is important for folks to understand what folks are getting taken away from them, and they are getting taken away their right to representation,” said former Sen. Doug Jones, D-Alabama, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination to be governor, in an interview at the event in Montgomery. “We have come so far in the state of Alabama. We have 60 years of progress that has been thrown backwards by the Supreme Court and the Legislature just a few blocks from here.”

Reginald Mason, who also traveled from Birmingham, said voting is what matters.

“People who don’t actually vote are not informed, they don’t know about the struggle that our ancestors went through,” Mason said. “I never thought I would be standing here today fighting for what they have already fought for me.”

Religious and faith leaders expressed many of the same concerns when they led congregants in prayers prior to the morning march across the Edmund Pettus bridge.

“What I realize is that it is just our turn, and freedom is not fought for once, freedom has been fought for many times,” Jones-Davis said. “We are here to do our part.”

In the past two years, a dozen states have either approved new U.S. House maps or are moving toward doing so — a highly unusual mid-decade revamp prompted by President Donald Trump and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling late last month. And the situation isn’t settled yet — even as ballots are being printed and early voting is already underway in some places. Pending litigation could scramble the situation even further.

Redistricting, the process of redrawing the geographic boundaries of U.S. House and state legislative districts, usually takes place every 10 years following the census.

Trump upended that schedule early last year, when he began pressuring state GOP officials to redraw their maps to help Republicans hold onto a slim, five-seat majority in the U.S. House ahead of potentially grim 2026 midterm elections for his party.

The Supreme Court recast the redistricting fight with its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. That decision all but nullified a provision of the federal Voting Rights Act that required states to draw electoral maps to give racial minority voters the opportunity to elect their chosen candidates.

A total of nine states — Alabama, California, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Utah — have redrawn their maps since last year. At least three other states — Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina — appear likely to follow suit, though Georgia’s new maps would not be in effect for the upcoming midterm elections.

As things currently stand, Republicans are likely to gain up to 17 seats, while Democrats are likely to gain up to six seats.

In the aftermath of the Callais decision, hundreds of protesters have gathered at statehouses in recent weeks, particularly in the South, to decry what they say is a concerted effort to dilute Black voting and governing power. Republicans argue that maps should be “colorblind.” Gerrymandering to benefit one political party over another is legal at the federal level, though some states have their own laws restricting it.

The latest redistricting efforts are changing elections that have already begun. Some candidates must now pivot to races in brand-new districts with just a few weeks until their primaries. They’ve spent money and time reaching people who can no longer vote for them, fighting opponents different from the ones they now face. At least one Tennessee Democratic candidate no longer lives within the new boundaries of the district he’s seeking to represent.

Voters in states such as Alabama will now be asked to turn out for primary elections in both May and August, in addition to the November general election.

Here’s where things stand now.

Nine states already have redrawn their maps

Alabama

Republicans could gain 1 seat.*

A 2023 court order required Alabama to draw a congressional map with a second majority-Black district. But after the Callais decision last month, Alabama’s Republican state officials asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let them reinstate the old map, which has just one majority-Black, majority-Democratic district and which the court had previously ruled racially discriminatory. The high court quickly agreed.

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has announced new primary elections in August for the affected districts. These will be held in addition to next Tuesday’s statewide primaries for other federal and state offices.

Alabama is also appealing a separate ruling requiring it to redraw two state Senate districts. That case is still ongoing.

California

Democrats likely to gain 3-5 seats.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom last year led the Democratic response to Trump’s call for Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps.

In November 2025, California voters approved Newsom’s proposal to temporarily override the state’s independent redistricting commission and instead to allow the Democratic-dominated legislature to redraw the maps to create districts more favorable to Democrats. The new map is valid through 2030.

Florida

Republicans likely to gain 1-4 seats.

Last month, the Republican-majority Florida Legislature approved Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new congressional map that could net the GOP up to four new congressional seats.

Both DeSantis and the voting rights organizations suing to block the new map agree it violates parts of the state constitution. But DeSantis argues the constitution’s anti-gerrymandering amendments, which were overwhelmingly adopted by Florida voters in 2010, are invalid, partly due to the Callais ruling.

Missouri

Republicans likely to gain 1 seat.

Earlier this week, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the state’s gerrymandered 2025 congressional map, handing Republicans a victory. Last summer, Trump pressured Missouri Republicans to help maintain the GOP majority in the U.S. House, so lawmakers met in a special session to draw a map that likely will give them an additional seat by carving off parts of Kansas City into surrounding rural districts.

The new map will be used in Missouri’s August primary, the state Supreme Court ruled this week, because it’s uncertain whether a referendum petition seeking to repeal the map will succeed.

North Carolina

Republicans likely to gain 1 seat.

At Trump’s behest, North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the state’s congressional map last fall. It was an effort to make the state’s only competitive district solidly Republican. The maps passed strictly along party lines. The state’s congressional delegation is now likely to be 11 Republicans and three Democrats. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein is a Democrat, but redistricting isn’t subject to the governor’s veto.

Ohio

Republicans likely to gain up to 2 seats.

Last fall, Ohio Republican House Speaker Matt Huffman publicly rebuffed Trump’s national push to gain more seats in Congress, while state Democrats proposed their own maps. An Ohio redistricting commission eventually approved a new map last October that is likely to yield 12 Republicans and three Democrats, compared with the current 10-5 split. GOP and Democratic lawmakers called it a “compromise.”

That map will be in place for the next six years. But political operatives told the Ohio Capital Journal they expect to see more redistricting efforts in 2030.

Tennessee

Republicans likely to gain 1 seat.

In a chaotic special session earlier this month, Republican lawmakers in Tennessee redrew congressional maps to shatter the state’s only majority-Black, majority-Democratic district. The newly passed map now favors Republicans in all nine Tennessee districts. Hundreds protested at the Tennessee statehouse as House Republicans voted on the new map and House Democrats gathered at the front of the chamber, locking arms in a show of solidarity.

This week, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, punished his Democratic colleagues for their protests by stripping them of committee and subcommittee appointments. On Friday morning, longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen announced he would not seek reelection after his district was carved up in the redrawing of the maps.

Texas

Republicans likely to gain 3-5 seats.

The nation’s redistricting battle kicked off in Texas last summer, after Trump pressured the Texas GOP to redraw the state’s congressional map to add up to five more Republican seats. State House Democrats pushed back, fleeing the state temporarily in August to halt the vote. But the map eventually passed after they returned. Civil rights groups sued, saying the new map was racially discriminatory.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court permanently upheld the new map, ensuring it remains in place for the 2026 midterms.

Utah

Democrats likely to gain 1 seat.

In 2018, Utah voters approved an anti-gerrymandering ballot measure that created an independent redistricting process, but Utah’s Republican-dominated legislature repealed and replaced it in 2021. Voters rights groups sued, arguing the resulting new map was a partisan gerrymander.

Eventually, after a multi-year legal battle, a new court-ordered map in 2025 gives Democrats a chance to win one of the state’s four congressional districts. The Utah GOP proposed a ballot initiative this year to ask Utah voters to officially repeal the 2018 anti-gerrymandering law, but it failed last month after thousands of petition signers removed their signatures.

Three states are in the process of redrawing their maps

Georgia

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has refused to pursue redistricting ahead of this year’s elections, which are already underway. But Kemp announced Wednesday that he will call a special session to redraw the state’s political maps for the 2028 elections. Georgia’s congressional delegation currently has nine Republicans and five Democrats.

Louisiana

Republicans could gain 1 seat.

The day after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s existing congressional districts as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the state’s congressional primaries to give lawmakers enough time to pass new maps.

This week, in a nearly 10-hour overnight committee hearing, Louisiana lawmakers advanced a bill that would eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black districts. The new map, if it passes, likely would give Republicans another seat in Congress.

The new map must win approval from both chambers by June 1. Litigation over the decision to delay primaries is ongoing.

South Carolina

Republicans could gain 1 seat.

South Carolina legislators will gather Friday for a special session to redraw the state’s congressional lines just 12 days before early voting opens. Lawmakers have set a deadline of May 26 to pass a new map. Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who previously said the matter was for the legislature to decide, called for the special session under pressure from the White House and state GOP.

The South Carolina GOP’s goal is to pass a bill that would delay U.S. House race primaries until August while keeping other primaries on schedule for June. One proposed map would cut South Carolina’s lone congressional Democrat, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, out of the seat he’s represented since 1992 and create all seven Republican seats.

At least a half dozen other states are interested in redrawing their maps

Mississippi

This week, Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves canceled a special legislative session he’d called to redraw districts for the state’s Supreme Court. Some GOP officials had hoped he’d add congressional redistricting to the agenda. Instead, he said this week, he’s working with Trump and the White House on a plan to redraw Mississippi’s congressional districts and legislative districts in the future. Reeves wants a map that would boot the lone Democrat in Mississippi’s U.S. House delegation, Rep. Bennie Thompson, from his seat.

If that happens, Republicans would likely gain one congressional seat.

Virginia

The Virginia Supreme Court earlier this month struck down a voter-approved redistricting amendment that could have given Democrats a 10-1 advantage in the state’s U.S. House delegation. Virginia voters last month had approved a referendum that would have netted Democrats three or four additional seats. Earlier this week, Virginia Democrats asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive the amendment, in a case that’s ongoing.

Arizona, New Jersey, New York, Washington 

Officials in Arizona, New Jersey, New York and Washington all have suggested drawing new maps following the Callais decision, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The Colorado Voting Rights Act, passed last year by the state’s Democratic-majority legislature, will likely prevent the state from embarking on a redistricting effort. The state’s congressional delegation is currently split 4-4 between Democrats and Republicans. But a Democratic-led group is gathering signatures for ballot measures that would allow the state to change its maps ahead of the 2028 election.

*Seat gain predictions from The Cook Political Report.

This story was updated to include the Friday morning announcement by Tennessee Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen that he will not seek reelection. Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.

JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — Control of the U.S. House may run through a courtroom in Missouri.

In a red brick courthouse across the street from the state Capitol, the seven black-robed judges of the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday morning weighed the fate of a Republican gerrymander aimed at ousting U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a 11-term Democrat from Kansas City.

In the afternoon, they upheld the map.

Its opponents “failed to show the 2025 Map clearly and undoubtedly violates the requirements” of the state constitution, the court ruled hours after holding oral arguments.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s late April decision sharply curtailing the use of race in redistricting, much of the legal fight over gerrymandering is moving to state courts. The decision, Louisiana vs. Callais, gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which limited states’ ability to divide districts where a majority of residents belong to a racial minority group.

Southern Republican states have rushed forward new maps over the past two weeks that take advantage of the landmark opinion, adding to a handful of others, including Missouri, that already drew new lines in recent months at President Donald Trump’s behest before the midterms elections this November. Another wave of gerrymanders across the rest of the country will likely follow next year ahead of the 2028 election.

State supreme courts may have the final word on some of the maps. Even if the maps don’t involve issues decided in Callais, like the challenge in Missouri, many states have constitutional or statutory provisions that curb gerrymandering and limit last-minute changes to elections — providing gerrymandering opponents with grounds to challenge new district boundaries.

With federal redistricting lawsuits increasingly difficult, state laws offer gerrymandering opponents another path. 

Thirty states have some form of a constitutional requirement for free elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And at least 10 state supreme courts have found that state courts can decide cases involving allegations of partisan gerrymandering, according to a 2024 review by the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. 

“I think state courts are primarily going to be the place where future fights around these maps are playing out in a post-Callais landscape,” said Alicia Bannon, director of the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

Legal challenges abound

The elevated importance of state courts was on full display Friday, when the Virginia Supreme Court invalidated an election in which voters narrowly approved a Democratic map. The decision leaves a new map in California as the party’s only successful response so far to the GOP redistricting onslaught. Democrats have made a longshot request to the U.S. Supreme Court to block the Virginia ruling.

Lawsuits have already been filed in state courts over new maps in Florida and Louisiana. Alabama’s new map could also face a legal challenge in state court, even after the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the gerrymander to take effect. 

At stake in these courtroom fights is which party will control the U.S. House over the next two years, earning the power to advance or thwart legislation. While Democrats remain generally favored to retake the chamber in the November midterm elections, Republicans will likely emerge from the gerrymandering war with at least a handful of seats secured.

Suddenly, every state supreme court decision — including over a single seat in Missouri — takes on greater significance.

Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, which is helping challenge the Missouri map, told reporters on Monday that the state’s high court had a “spotlight on” it.

“Is the court going to do what it has done in the past in a nonpartisan way that is faithful to their own precedent,” she asked ahead of the decision. “Or are they going to roll over?”

Missouri case

The Republican-controlled Missouri General Assembly in September approved a map intended to leave the state with just one Democrat in Congress, in the St. Louis area. Kansas City was divided among three districts, splitting apart its Democratic-leaning and racially diverse core. 

The Missouri Supreme Court considered three challenges to the map. Two similar lawsuits argue that some of the congressional districts don’t follow the state constitution’s requirements that districts be as compact as possible.

A third lawsuit argues that the map shouldn’t be in effect for the 2026 election because opponents in December submitted more than 305,000 signatures seeking to force a statewide referendum vote on the lines. In the past, state officials have paused the implementation of measures subject to a referendum until a vote is held, but in this instance they say the new lines are active.

During Tuesday’s oral arguments, the judges sat almost entirely stone-faced as they listened. Only one judge asked a single question during arguments that stretched for more than an hour, offering no sense of how the court would rule.

“There is no such thing as a perfect map or a perfect district,” Missouri Principal Deputy Solicitor General Kathleen Hunker said.

Jonathan Hawley, an attorney representing Missouri voters who argue the referendum means the map isn’t in effect, said his case will decide whether the people of Missouri “still have a meaningful referendum.”

“The referendum right is the people’s veto,” Hawley said.

The Missouri Supreme Court hours later ruled against both challenges to the maps — allowing the new lines to be used this year.

“Had the drafters intended a referendum petition filing to automatically suspend any act of the General Assembly at issue in the referendum petition, they would have so stated,” the court’s opinion says.

Florida’s GOP gerrymander

Only two Southern states, Florida and Kentucky, allow courts to decide partisan gerrymandering cases.

Kentucky, which has a Democratic governor, hasn’t taken up redistricting this year. But a Florida Supreme Court decision striking down a new map there would effectively offset Democrats’ loss at the Virginia Supreme Court.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a map passed by the state legislature during a special session on the same day as the Callais decision. The new congressional boundaries are designed to hand Republicans up to four additional seats.

Several voting rights groups have sued, alleging the map violates the Florida Constitution. A 2010 amendment approved by voters prohibits districts drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent.

“Instead of abiding by this law, the Legislature is defying the will of voters and backing a map that was crafted entirely with partisan intent,” Simone Leeper, senior legal counsel for redistricting at Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. 

The Campaign Legal Center and the UCLA Voting Rights Project have sued jointly over the map.

DeSantis’s office told state lawmakers ahead of this year’s special session that the 2010 amendment requires the state legislature to account for race when drawing districts — and that the provisions regarding race can’t be severed from the rest of the amendment. In effect, DeSantis contends the whole amendment must be thrown out.

The Florida governor’s pitch, coupled with the Callais decision, persuaded GOP lawmakers.

“I have a ton of comfort because the Callais decision came out,” Florida state Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican, said. “I got to read it, and it perfectly summarizes exactly why we could, and should, change our 2022 maps.”

Map opponents’ chance of success at the Florida Supreme Court is unclear. The court as recently as 2015 blocked a congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander, but it has moved to the right in the years since. Six of the seven current justices were appointed by DeSantis and the other was appointed by a different Republican governor.

“The composition of the Florida Supreme Court has changed dramatically since that earlier ruling,” Bannon, the Brennan Center expert, said. “So I think there are questions about will the court be as open to those arguments.”

Process challenges

In other Southern states, map opponents are turning to arguments beside partisan gerrymandering.

The Tennessee chapter of the NAACP has sued Republican Gov. Bill Lee and the state General Assembly to block a gerrymander passed last week from taking effect. The organization alleges Lee violated the state constitution in how he called a special session for a new map. 

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, a Republican, has urged a court to dismiss Lee and the legislature from lawsuit because they don’t conduct elections.

Alabama Democrats and voting rights groups are weighing a legal challenge to a new map that would focus on a 2022 amendment to the state constitution. The amendment requires election law changes to be made at least six months before a general election — a deadline of May 3 this year. Alabama’s redistricting special session began the next day.

In Louisiana, state lawmakers have not yet passed a new map after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current lines as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because the legislature had previously created a second majority-Black district. Lawmakers are expected to advance a map aimed at ousting one of the state’s two Democratic House members, who are both Black.

After the Callais decision, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the state’s congressional primary elections although roughly 42,000 absentee ballots had already been cast. Lawsuits challenging the suspension have been filed in both federal and state court.

Too late to change?

In Missouri on Tuesday, lawyers for Republican state officials took the opposite approach, urging the state supreme court to keep the map in place for the 2026 election, even if the judges strike it down. Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, told reporters afterward that preventing the state from using the map now would lead to confusion, even as 12 weeks remain before the primary election.

“It’ll be disarray for the people that have been going to town halls and listening to candidates,” Hoskins said. “It would be disarray for the candidates that are running and going out and meeting voters in their district. And it’d be disarray for the local election authorities and county clerks that have already started instituting” the new map.

Hoskins’ fears turned out to be unfounded, as the court upheld the map.

Cleaver, who is running for reelection, has said that his work ethic or commitment to voters won’t change regardless of his district boundaries. 

“If I have to serve the people who live just outside of Columbia and Jefferson City, then I’ll do that,” he said when he filed to run earlier this year.

Attorneys for the ACLU of Missouri, which supported challenges to the map, said it was unfair to Missouri residents for the state to create a problem and then argue it’s too late to change it. 

At a rally outside the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday, ACLU of Missouri Policy Director Tori Schafer expressed confidence the judges would side with map opponents — hours before they allowed the lines to move forward.

“But let me clear,” Schafer said, “democracy did not begin in a courtroom and it will not be saved in a courtroom.”

Florida Phoenix reporter Mitch Perry contributed to this report.

The Alabama Legislature on Friday passed two bills that would allow the state to set new primary elections in certain congressional and legislative district if federal courts allow the state to revert to maps it previously declared racially discriminatory.

The session came after the U.S. Supreme Court substantially weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, preventing racial discrimination in voting laws, in Louisiana v. Callais, and as the Alabama Attorney General’s Office sought to overturn prior court rulings that led to the creation of a second congressional district with a substantial population of Black voters.

Republicans said the efforts were meant to allow state officials to draw maps. Gov. Kay Ivey, who called the special session on May 1, said it would take mapping power from “activist groups who think they know Alabama better than Alabama.”

Democrats through the session said Republicans were trying to reduce Black political representation, won through the suffering and deaths of civil rights activists.

“My aunt bludgeoned on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, tear gas, billy clubs, trampled over for the right to vote not a long time ago,” said Sen. Robert Stewart, D-Selma, during debate on Friday. “We didn’t even have the Voting Rights Act intact for 50 years. That is a sin and a shame.”

Protestors shadowed the session all week, from a Monday rally that drew at least 400 people to demonstrations in legislative committees on Thursday to a protest on Friday that led to the removal of one activist from the House galleries and drew Democratic state representatives attempting to intervene on her behalf.

Litigation over the new laws is likely if the federal courts reverse their previous rulings and allow the state to redistrict. Democrats throughout the week noted an amendment to the Alabama Constitution passed in 2022 forbids election law changes six months before an election. Republicans said the amendment did not apply to primaries.

Alabama Reflector staffers documented the session and took photos throughout the week.

Tensions erupted Friday as Republican state lawmakers presented new election maps to eliminate one or both of Louisiana’s majority-Black congressional districts.

Hundreds of people came to the State Capitol, filling several overflow rooms, to watch the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee, which met to consider new U.S. House district boundaries and give the public a chance to comment. Lawmakers don’t plan to start voting on the maps until at least next week. 

Committee chairman Sen. Caleb Kleinpeter, R-Port Allen, called the hearing after Gov. Jeff Landry declared a state of emergency and suspended Louisiana’s upcoming U.S. House primary elections April 30, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state’s existing congressional map was  an unconstitutional racial gerrymander against white voters. 

Within minutes of the meeting coming to order, Sen. Gary Carter Jr., D-New Orleans, began questioning Kleinpeter about how many absentee ballots had already been cast in the May 16 U.S. House primaries and whether the votes would be counted.  

“Can you give the public certainty that those ballots will not be discarded?” Carter asked.

Kleinpeter said Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry, no relation to the governor, was the appropriate official to answer his question, but she was not in attendance. 

Carter continued his questioning, asking Kleinpeter if he was personally concerned about the status of his own ballot. 

“Have you voted yet?” Carter asked.

“I don’t have to answer that,” Kleinpeter responded. 

Surprised by the rapid-fire questions from the generally soft-spoken Carter, Kleinpeter called for a recess, which eased tensions enough for the meeting to resume after several minutes. 

Kleinpeter told Carter he would make sure the secretary of state was made aware of his questions, and that she or someone from her office would attend the committee’s next meeting, which is scheduled for Wednesday.

Nancy Landry has declined to answer questions related to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, explaining that the case, Callais v. Louisiana, is still in litigation after being returned to the federal district court where it originated. There are also ongoing legal challenges to the governor’s order to postpone the U.S. House primaries.

The rest of Friday’s hearing saw tempers flare among senators and protesters, with chants of “shut it down” heard from attendees watching from the Senate committee hall corridor and adjacent overflow rooms.

The discussion grew particularly heated when state Sen. Jay Morris, R-West Monroe, presented his congressional map that eliminates both majority-Black U.S. House districts. Morris, who is white, said his proposed boundaries don’t prevent a Black candidate from winning one of the state’s six seats. 

“I didn’t draw it with the intention to draw it 6-0,” Morris said. “I left race out of it … It’s intended to comply with the Supreme Court in Callais.”

Carter began a fiery exchange with Morris about legislation the West Monroe senator sponsored this session to eliminate the Orleans Parish clerk of criminal court and eliminate several of its judgeships. Gov. Jeff Landry signed the clerk bill into law, preventing exonerated “prison lawyer” Calvin Duncan, who is now an actual attorney, from assuming office. Morris’ measure paring back the Orleans judges’ roster awaits House consideration.  

“Let’s look at the totality of your work,” Carter told Morris. “Your work has eliminated the elected seat of an African American in the city of New Orleans. Your work has eliminated the political power of numerous elected officials in the city of New Orleans.”

Morris said his legislation is meant only to consolidate Orleans Parish’s dual court systems for civil and criminal cases, the only one of its kind in the state.

Carter and Morris began speaking over each other, prompting Kleinpeter to call another recess, which cut off the microphones and the Capitol’s live video feed. 

“Put my microphone back on!” Carter yelled. “He’s suggesting he’s not racist. I suggest we look at his work.”

“You are out of line,” Kleinpeter said.

 

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The sergeants-at-arms intervened, trying to calm the room as Carter and Morris both stood up to leave. As Morris walked away, he turned to the spectators seated behind him, all against his proposals, and said, “Y’all need to shut up.” 

“I was frustrated when, as I was trying to answer questions from committee members, people in the audience directly behind me were continuing to comment and talk loudly enough so that it was hard for me to concentrate and answer questions,” Morris said in a statement issued after the hearing.  

As Carter and Morris both left the committee room for another recess, the crowd in the hallway  chanted “let him speak,” referring to Carter. Sergeants-at-arms stood guard on each side of the committee room’s two sets of double doors, refusing to let anyone enter or exit. 

@wesleysmuller Protestors try to barge into Senate hearing on congressional redistricting #livehighlights #tiktoklive ♬ original sound – Wes Muller

One protester, Mike McClanahan, the NAACP’s state conference president, managed to open the door and try to enter, but guards physically forced him back into the hall and shut the doors.

McClanahan was eventually allowed into the room once the commotion had settled down. In a later interview, he said he just wanted to see what was going on because the live feed was cut off.

“This is the people’s house,” McClanahan said. “We have the right to hear every single thing, especially while the session’s going on in our house. So I was just trying to tell them, ‘Let the people speak. Let the people speak.’ Because we need to hear. We want to hear.”

Morris did not return to the hearing and did not respond to a phone call later Friday. 

In a meeting that went on for about six hours, the committee heard from several voting rights advocates. 

Before the second recess, all four of Louisiana’s Black congressmen, past and present, since the Reconstruction era spoke to the committee: current U.S. Reps. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans; Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge; and former Congressmen William Jefferson and Cedric Richmond.

Troy Carter’s 2nd District seat would be eliminated in the version of the map Kleinpeter has said lawmakers are most likely to advance. The congressman is the uncle of state Sen. Gary Carter.

“Today, here in Louisiana we’re being tested and the whole world is watching,” Troy Carter said. “The question before us is not merely about lines on a map. The question before us is whether we will honor the principle that every citizen deserves equal protection of the law.”

The Supreme Court of Virginia on Friday struck down the voter-approved redistricting amendment, upholding a lower court ruling that had declared the measure unconstitutional less than 24 hours after last week’s special election and briefly halted its implementation.

State Democrats later said they would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of the United States.

The high court found that the amendment itself was flawed because lawmakers approved the proposal after voting had already started in the 2025 House of Delegates elections, depriving more than 1.3 million Virginians of an opportunity to weigh the issue when choosing their representatives.

Virginia voters back redistricting amendment after months of legal and political battles

The 4-3 ruling leaves the state’s current congressional districts — which give Democrats a 6-5 advantage — in place throughout the 2026 midterm election and the rest of the decade, instead of proposed districts that Democrats believed could produce a 10-1 advantage.  

The decision affirms the ruling by a Tazewell County judge who had blocked the amendment, siding with Republican challengers who argued the General Assembly failed to follow required constitutional procedures. 

In the opinion, the justices said Article XII, Section 1 of Virginia’s constitution requires “an intervening general election” between the legislature’s first and second approvals of a constitutional amendment so voters can evaluate candidates based on their stance on the proposal.

“The purpose of Article XII, Section 1 is to give voters the opportunity to participate in the process of amending their Constitution,” Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote for the majority. “The commonwealth in this case … ended up denying over 1.3 million Virginians their constitutional right to have a voice in the debate over whether their Constitution should be amended.” 

State Sen. Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover, the Senate Republican leader and one of the appellees in the case, praised the ruling as a reaffirmation of Virginia’s constitutional process.

“The Supreme Court ruling today affirms what we all know: you cannot violate the Constitution to change the Constitution,” McDougle said in a statement. He added that the decision showed “even the General Assembly must follow the law.”

McDougle called the ruling “not a partisan one — it is a constitutional one” and said “every Virginian wins.”

House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, another appellee, praised the decision as a reaffirmation that constitutional amendment procedures must be strictly followed regardless of political considerations.

“Today’s ruling establishes once again that the Constitution of Virginia means what it says,” Kilgore said in a statement. 

“The rule of law requires that Virginians have an opportunity to review a constitutional amendment before they vote for the House of Delegates in a meaningful way. You cannot violate the constitution to amend the constitution.”

And Joe Gruters, chairman of the Republican National Committee, which had filed an amicus brief in the case and brought a similar challenge, accused Democrats of trying to redraw Virginia’s congressional districts for political advantage ahead of the 2026 midterms.

“Democrats just learned that when you try to rig elections, you lose,” Gruters said in a statement. “Today, the Virginia Supreme Court sided with the rule of law and struck down Democrats’ unconstitutional maps.”

Gruters said the RNC had “led the charge in court against this blatant power grab” and accused Democrats of spending “more than $66 million into an effort to lock in control and silence voters.”

Meanwhile, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones criticized the ruling and said the state is still considering its legal options.

“Today the Supreme Court of Virginia has chosen to put politics over the rule of law by issuing a ruling that overturns the April 21 special election on redistricting,” Jones said in a statement. “This decision silences the voices of the millions of Virginians who cast their ballots in every corner of the commonwealth.”

Jones defended the amendment process as “timely, constitutionally-compliant, and legally sound,” and accused the court’s Republican-appointed majority of “contort[ing] the plain language of the Constitution and Code of Virginia.”

He said his office is “evaluating every legal pathway forward to defend the will of the people and protect the integrity of Virginia’s elections.”

By Friday afternoon, state Democrats made a filing asking the high court to delay enforcing its ruling, suggesting they would pursue an appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

“Appellants and the Commonwealth intend to file an emergency petition to the Supreme Court of the United States,” the court document read.

But Carl Tobias,  a constitutional law professor at the University of Richmond, said an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States would face significant practical and legal obstacles, particularly this late in the court’s term and so close to the 2026 elections.

“It is very late in the SCOTUS term for the U.S. Supreme Court justices to give an appeal a full-dress treatment, and the justices are often reluctant to rule on voting disputes as elections approach,” Tobias said. 

“However, this is an important case, so it may be possible that SCOTUS would entertain an appeal.” He added that the nation’s highest court “may also be reluctant to second guess the interpretation of Virginia’s Constitution by a 4-3 majority of the Virginia Supreme Court justices.”

The court’s decision comes twelve days after justices heard oral arguments in the case, pressing attorneys on whether lawmakers complied with constitutional requirements governing amendments. 

At issue was whether Democrats had lawfully advanced the amendment through the required legislative process before sending it to voters. 

The case focused on disputes over whether there was a valid intervening General Election between legislative approvals, whether the public received the required notice ahead of the November election, and whether the amendment could legally be taken up during a special session initially called to address changes to the state budget. 

During arguments, Justice Wesley G. Russell Jr. questioned both sides closely, probing the limits of legislative authority and whether alleged procedural defects should invalidate the measure already approved by the voters. 

The morning after the hearing, the court denied a request by the Virginia Department of Elections to stay Tazewell County’s April 22 order while it continued to consider the case. 

House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, one of the chief architects of the amendment, said Friday that while he respects the court’s decision, the referendum still reflected the will of millions of Virginians who backed the measure at the ballot box.

“Three million people voted in a free and fair election,” Scott said in a statement. “We gave this decision to the voters — exactly where it belongs — and they spoke loud and clear.” 

He added that supporters would “keep fighting for a democracy where voters — not politicians — have the final say.”

President Donald Trump weighed in on his Truth Social network, calling the ruling a “Huge win for the Republican Party, and America, in Virginia.”

GOP challenges test limits of amendment process

The lawsuit was filed in October by Republican lawmakers and a member of Virginia’s redistricting commission. Plaintiffs included state Sens. Ryan McDougle of Hanover and Bill Stanley of Franklin, Del. Terry Kilgore of Scott, and Commissioner Virginia Trost Thornton. 

They argued that the legislature overstepped its authority and failed to follow the constitutionally mandated process, which requires amendments to pass the General Assembly twice with an intervening General Election before going to voters. 

Tazewell County Circuit Court Judge Jack C. Hurley agreed in January, ruling that the amendment process was flawed. 

The state appealed, and while the Supreme Court allowed the referendum to proceed ahead of the April 21 vote, it did not immediately resolve the underlying legal questions, setting the stage for a post-election hearing and this week’s decision. 

The case has drawn national attention as both parties look ahead to the 2026 midterms, when control of the U.S. House could come down to a small number of competitive districts. 

Virginia’s attempt to redraw congressional districts outside the normal post-census cycle became part of a broader national push by both parties to revisit House maps ahead of the midterms. The effort gained momentum after Trump encouraged Republican-led states, beginning with Texas, to pursue similar redistricting moves.  

The lower court’s ruling April 22 briefly halted those plans in Virginia.

Hurley found lawmakers exceeded the scope of the special session in which the amendment was first introduced, failed to meet public notice requirements and did not properly satisfy the intervening election requirement. 

Friday’s ruling from the Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed that decision, although it remains unclear if the ruling will be viewed as a precedent for two related cases currently moving through the court system, or whether these cases will be taken up separately by the high court.

David Richards, a political science professor at the University of Lynchburg, said the ruling represents both a political blow to Democrats and a broader affirmation that constitutional procedures still matter, regardless of the political stakes involved.

“The Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling today is an obvious setback for the Democrats, but it is also a win for making the state government pay closer attention to the rules,” Richards said. 

“The whole referendum was hastily put together, and this is the result we get — so much time and money wasted in an effort to work around the rules and a districting system that the voters had just approved a few years earlier.” 

He added that while “it may not be the outcome some people wanted,” the court “was right not to give in to pressure and instead soberly look at the process.”

From late-October push to legal showdown

The redistricting battle began on Oct. 27, just days before the Nov. 4 state elections, when Democratic lawmakers introduced a constitutional amendment during a special session of the General Assembly that would allow congressional districts to be redrawn outside of the once-in-a-decade redistricting cycle tied to the census. 

The proposal immediately sparked partisan fights over both the timing of the amendment and Democrats’ push to redraw Virginia’s congressional map ahead of the midterms. 

The House advanced the proposal the next day, and the Senate approved it on Oct. 31 along party lines, pushing it forward as required by the multi-step constitutional process, which required the amendment to pass again in a subsequent session. 

When lawmakers returned to Richmond in January, they approved the legislation a second time, but the measure soon became entangled in legal challenges. 

After Hurley first ruled the amendment invalid, the Supreme Court of Virginia intervened, allowing the referendum to proceed despite the lower court ruling. At the time, justices made clear they were not resolving the broader legal questions, only ensuring that voters would have the opportunity to weigh in. 

The court’s earlier decision to allow the referendum onto the ballot led many legal observers to believe the amendment would likely survive if voters approved it. 

As the legal fight continued, Democrats began outlining what the new congressional districts would look like. A proposed map released in early February that would likely favor them in most of Virginia’s 11 districts.

Republicans escalated their opposition soon after, filing additional legal challenges and seeking to block the vote. A temporary restraining order by the Tazewell County court applied locally, but the Supreme Court again stepped in to stay that order, allowing the referendum to proceed statewide. 

Heated campaigns culminate in close final margin 

The fight over the amendment intensified in the weeks leading up to the vote.

Outside groups backing both sides poured millions of dollars into the campaign in March, flooding voters with ads and mailers. Some of the messaging drew criticism for using civil rights-era imagery.

Civil rights imagery in anti-redistricting mailers draws outrage in Virginia

Both parties expanded outreach efforts as early voting data showed strong turnout in Republican-leaning parts of the state, making the final outcome harder to predict. 

In the final days of the campaign, Gov. Abigail Spanberger ramped up her public support for the amendment while former Gov. Glenn Youngkin urged voters to reject the measure and continued pressing the courts to block the measure. 

Spanberger said Friday she was disappointed by the ruling but emphasized that voters will still ultimately decide the balance of political power in the 2026 midterm elections.

“More than three million Virginians cast their ballots in Virginia’s redistricting referendum, and the majority of Virginia voters voted to push back against a president who said he is ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress with a temporary and responsive referendum,” Spanberger said in a statement. “They made their voices heard.”

She added that while she disagreed with the court’s decision, her administration’s focus would now shift toward voter participation in the upcoming elections. 

Voters ultimately approved the amendment by roughly three percentage points April 21, before the dispute returned to the Supreme Court. 

With the Supreme Court’s decision now in place, the new congressional maps will not take effect, leaving Virginia’s current districts in place until a previously passed amendment requires the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission to draw new maps following the 2030 census. 

Editor’s note: This is a breaking news story that will be updated as more information becomes available. 

The day after the U.S. Supreme Court crippled the federal Voting Rights Act, NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson addressed a virtual gathering for the group’s members and supporters where he ranked the landmark decision alongside the court’s most infamous cases.

Dred Scott excluded Black people from American citizenship ahead of the Civil War. Plessy blessed policies of racial segregation in 1896. And now there was Callais. 

The opinion will “probably go down in the history book as one of three of the worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of this nation,” Johnson said.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Louisiana vs. Callais on April 29 cleared states to split apart, for political gain, congressional districts where a majority of residents belong to minority groups. The court’s conservative majority said Louisiana lawmakers acted unconstitutionally when they intentionally created the state’s second majority-Black district, which the justices found unnecessary.

A week after its release, the decision is roiling politics across the South as states move at a rapid pace to recast the political landscape that has taken progressives by surprise. 

Republicans, triumphant over their victory at the court, are rushing fresh gerrymanders through Southern statehouses in time for the November midterm elections in an effort to strengthen their party’s control over the region’s U.S. House delegations. They’re acting at lightning speed, over loud protests, and have nullified votes by suspending ongoing elections.

Democrats, especially Black residents, are furious with both the court and GOP politicians, who they believe are poised to wipe away decades of Black political progress in the region. The new maps that seek to oust Black members of Congress and prevent the election of Democrats in the future recall a Jim Crow past of literacy tests and poll taxes, they say.

“We refuse to let you kill us by killing our vote,” Eliza Jane Franklin, a resident of rural Barbour County, Alabama, told a state House hearing Tuesday.

Decision kicked off legislative efforts

The Alabama Legislature is moving to authorize a special primary election using a congressional map currently blocked in federal court, if a district court or, ultimately, the Supreme Court allows the state to move forward. At least one of the state’s two Black members of the U.S. House would be vulnerable.

In Louisiana, the governor has suspended the state’s primary elections for the U.S. House, setting aside some 42,000 votes that were already cast. Republican lawmakers will begin advancing a new gerrymander in a matter of days, aiming to force out at least one of the state’s two Black House members.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new map into law Monday that aims to hand his party up to four additional U.S. House seats. State lawmakers approved the map hours after the Supreme Court’s decision. The map has already drawn multiple legal challenges.

The South Carolina Legislature is weighing whether to redraw maps. And Tennessee lawmakers want to gerrymander a Memphis district currently held by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a white Democrat who represents the state’s only majority-Black district. 

“The Supreme Court has opined that redistricting, like the judicial system, should be color-blind,” Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, said in a statement Thursday unveiling a plan to divide the Memphis area among three congressional seats.

More states, in the South and elsewhere, are expected to pursue new maps over the next two years. Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp ruled out a special session this year, for example, but supports redistricting before the 2028 election. 

The current moment represents an extraordinary time in America, said Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO of Fair Elections Center, a nonpartisan voting rights group. But she also called it a reversion “back to America.”

Many thought the presence of Black, Hispanic and Asian American elected officials somehow meant racial discrimination no longer existed, she said.

“And unfortunately, that is a misread of American history,” Caruthers said. “And perhaps it is a retelling of American history for those who want to gloss over America’s very sordid past, especially when it comes to voting rights.”

Midterms impact

The scramble by a handful of Southern states to redraw districts comes as Republicans grasp for any scintilla of advantage ahead of the midterm elections in November. 

A U.S. House under Democratic control would spell the end of much of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, produce a wave of investigations into his administration and potentially lead to a vote to impeach him in the House, though the Senate would almost certainly acquit him.

“This is all about Donald Trump wanting to avoid hard questions and oversight hearings about his actions,” Cohen said at a news conference in Memphis.

Seth McKee, a political science professor at Oklahoma State University who has studied Southern politics, said Republicans are attempting to “staunch the bleeding” ahead of unfavorable midterm elections.

“The desperation of this Republican Party, it’s off the charts,” McKee said.

Redistricting push supercharged

Prior to Callais, Trump had already urged Republicans to redraw congressional maps for partisan advantage — a process that typically occurs once a decade after the census. 

Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas enacted more GOP-friendly maps, while Democrats struck back in California and Virginia. In Utah, Republicans want to block a court-ordered map that’s more favorable to Democrats.

Republican primary voters have given their approval to that approach. On Tuesday, five Trump-endorsed state legislative candidates in Indiana defeated GOP incumbents who had defied the president to block a gerrymander in the state last year.

But until now the Voting Rights Act limited how far that gerrymandering push could extend.

For decades, Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act helped protect majority-minority districts from gerrymandering and ensured voters could elect Black candidates to Congress in Southern states following the end of state laws that blocked Black citizens from voting. The Callais opinion guts Section 2 by curtailing the consideration of race when drawing legislative maps.

Republicans have praised the decision and many have been clear that they believe the opinion opens up a path to securing additional GOP seats. Trump has endorsed disregarding primary elections that have already been held so that states can pass new maps — which he predicts can net Republicans an additional 20 seats this fall.

“We cannot allow there to be an Election that is conducted unconstitutionally simply for the ‘convenience’ of State Legislatures,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If they have to vote twice, so be it.”

Calls for GOP seats

Over the past week, some Republicans have cast majority-minority districts previously protected by the Voting Rights Act as racist because they were drawn with attention paid to the racial makeup of the map. U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican, wrote on X that there are “no more excuses for keeping racist maps,” for example, and called for their immediate removal.

Other GOP leaders have centered their case for quick action on political power. Like Trump, they have explicitly invoked control of the U.S. House as a reason to gerrymander. While Republicans have the House, their margin of control is razor thin: 217 to 212, with one independent and five vacancies. Even a modest Democratic wave in November will likely sweep away GOP control.

Alabama Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger Jr. and House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter said in a joint statement that the state’s lawmakers have a responsibility to offer Alabama a “fighting chance” to elect seven Republican U.S. representatives. Two of the state’s seven districts are held by Democrats.

“Control of the U.S. House of Representatives could come down to just a handful of seats, and when the dust settles, the people of Alabama will know that their Legislature stood firm, acted decisively, and did everything within its power to fight for fair representation,” Gudger and Ledbetter said.

Alabama Republicans want to use a map passed by lawmakers in 2023 that federal courts blocked from taking effect. Alabama’s current map was drawn by a court-appointed special master.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a Republican, asked a federal district court Tuesday for an order that would let the state move forward with the gerrymander.

In Louisiana, Republicans obtained special permission from the Supreme Court to quickly move forward on a new gerrymander after the justices struck down its current map in the Callais decision.

Absentee voting was already underway in Louisiana before Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended congressional primary elections set for May 16. Votes already cast for U.S. House candidates won’t count, Republican Secretary of State Nancy Landry, no relation, has said.

Louisiana state lawmakers are set to begin work on a new map this month that will likely break apart a New Orleans district held by U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, a Black Democrat who has fought with the governor.

“The Court’s decision in these cases has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the Supreme Court’s three liberal justices, wrote in a dissent of the decision to quickly finalize Callais.

Court challenges

Still, Democrats and other opponents of the gerrymandering effort across the South are turning to the courts. Lawsuits have also been filed challenging the suspension of Louisiana’s congressional primaries and Florida’s new map also faces court challenges.

A petition filed in Louisiana state court by Elias Law Group, a major Democrat-aligned voting rights litigation firm, alleges the governor’s decision to halt the congressional primary is unlawful and unprecedented. Only the state legislature has the power to set the state’s election schedule, the petition argues.

“Governors do not get to cancel elections by executive fiat, least of all elections that are already underway, with ballots in voters’ hands and votes already cast,” Lali Madduri, a partner at Elias Law Group, said in a statement.

Regardless of how the legal challenges play out, Democrats say the Callais decision and the ongoing fallout from the decision underscore the need for massive voter turnout in the November election. A large Democratic turnout that results in a significant Democratic majority in the U.S. House would serve as a rebuke to Trump’s gerrymandering campaign, they say.

Blue state gerrymanders

U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, South Carolina’s sole congressional Democrat, said during the NAACP virtual meeting that a Democratic House could pass voting rights legislation. 

“I would hope we could do that because I really think that’s our only hope legislatively,” Clyburn said.

Democrats have long called for the passage of a bill to restore preclearance, a major element of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court paused in 2013, which required states and local governments with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal permission before making voting changes. 

But the measure would face a certain filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Even if Democrats broke a filibuster, Trump would likely veto it. 

In effect, Democrats’ most realistic opportunity to enact major voting rights legislation relies on regaining control of the White House and Congress and ending the filibuster — a set of conditions that’s out of reach until at least 2029.

In the meantime, more Democrats are calling for aggressive gerrymandering of blue states as a way to punch back. U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Rep. Joseph Morelle, both New York Democrats, on Monday announced an initiative to encourage their state to redraw congressional districts ahead of the 2028 election.

Gerrymandering New York would be an intensive effort, likely requiring voters to repeal or suspend anti-gerrymandering provisions in the state constitution. But voters in California and Virginia have previously endorsed Democratic gerrymanders.

“This is just the beginning,” Jeffries said in a statement. “Across the nation, we will sue, we will redraw and we will win.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s new decision gutting a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act clears the way for state officials to drastically reshape not only Congress but also state legislatures, county commissions, city councils and even local school boards.

The ruling, released last week in a case called Louisiana v. Callais, dismantled some of the final guardrails protecting the electoral power of Black, Hispanic and other racial minority voters that had been enshrined in the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 federal civil rights law that bars racial discrimination in voting access.

The 6-3 decision all but nullifies a provision called Section 2 that required states to draw electoral maps to give racial minority voters the opportunity to elect their chosen candidates.

And while intense national attention on the case’s fallout has focused on the U.S.  House as the 2026 midterm congressional elections loom, the new ruling also applies to state legislative districts and maps for county or municipal elections.

Those localized changes are just hovering further down the road.

“While everyone has been focusing on what this means for the power in Congress, there’s a whole other sector of power that it changes,” said Davante Lewis, an elected member of the Louisiana Public Service Commission and one of the litigants in a case that pushed Louisiana to create the congressional maps that were eventually struck down in the Callais ruling.

“This is a decision on who gets to serve on a school board, who gets to serve on a city council, who gets representation in the judiciary,” Lewis said.

Electoral maps are typically redrawn every 10 years after a census, but the Trump administration has encouraged Republican-led states to redraw districts to favor the GOP, a controversial move that has prompted some Democratic-led states to retaliate with gerrymandering of their own.

“But after 2030, I think we’re definitely going to see the impact of the Callais decision at the state level,” said Travis Crum, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis whose research focuses on voting rights, race and federalism.

Effects across the South

Critics of the ruling say it will fundamentally dilute the voting and governing power of Black and other minority citizens up and down the ballot, particularly in the South. There, many of the seats held by Black elected officials are in so-called opportunity districts that were created after the Voting Rights Act to allow Black and other minority voters to elect their preferred candidates.

“On the congressional level, we’re in this race to the bottom of redistricting, but when it comes to the state legislative level, we’ll have to wait and see,” Crum said.

In 10 state legislatures across the South, Republicans could gain more than 190 seats currently held by Democrats, most of them Black representatives in majority-minority districts, according to an analysis released in December by voting rights groups Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund. At the federal level, one analysis from The New York Times found that Democrats stand to lose a dozen U.S. House seats across the South.

In the hours after the Supreme Court ruling, Republicans across the nation began calling for maps to be redrawn, particularly in states where courts had forced them to create districts where Black or other racial minorities made up the majority of residents.

A US Supreme Court ruling hammered voting rights. What does it mean and what happens now?

“These lines should all be colorblind. You should never be basing a decision on race,” said Arizona Republican state Sen. Warren Petersen, who’s president of the state Senate and running for attorney general.

He told Stateline he believes both congressional and state legislative maps should be redrawn in Arizona — even if it takes litigation.

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves called a special legislative session set for later this month, when he wants lawmakers to draw new election maps for Mississippi state Supreme Court districts. A federal judge in Mississippi will have to quickly decide whether to adopt a new map for some special elections scheduled for November.

Democrats, too, took action. In Illinois, lawmakers backtracked on a proposed constitutional amendment that would have directed lawmakers to consider race in drawing district lines, a provision taken directly from the Voting Rights Act. Instead, Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, a Democrat, told Capitol News Illinois that lawmakers want to learn more about the ruling before putting such an amendment on a ballot for voters to decide, to prevent unintended consequences that could undermine voting rights.

In many states, Republicans are focusing first on congressional redistricting. Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry postponed his state’s U.S. House primaries even though absentee voting has already begun. In Alabama, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey called a special state legislative session aiming to move the state’s May 19 primary in at least a handful of districts. Prominent Georgia Republicans were also calling for their state’s political maps to be redrawn, though GOP Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement that it’s too late to do that this year.

And in North Dakota, the ruling leaves a tribal redistricting case in limbo. Tribes had used Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to sue the state over a legislative district map the North Dakota legislature approved in 2021.

Gerrymandering for partisan advantage is legal at the federal level, though some states do have their own laws restricting or prohibiting it. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is arguing the Supreme Court ruling invalidates voter-approved amendments that prevent the state from gerrymandering districts based on race or political party.

For most states, though, state officials can redraw maps explicitly to favor Republican voters, for example, so long as they don’t state their intention to disadvantage voters based on race.

‘Ripple like wildfire’

Critics of last week’s Callais ruling also worry it will rapidly erode the pipeline that has made it possible for Black and other minority candidates to get elected to office.

“Now, state legislatures can draw maps where they are picking their voters instead of their voters picking them,” said Lewis, the Louisiana commissioner. “They can dilute the power of Black and brown people serving in the state legislature, which means there’s fewer people to fight a congressional map” that pulls voting power away from minority communities.

He worries that if Black Democratic state lawmakers oppose their white Republican colleagues in legislatures with GOP majorities, those colleagues could redraw maps to eliminate the Black lawmakers’ seats, claiming they’re doing it only for partisan reasons.

The diluting of minority voting power, he said, “is going to ripple like wildfire.”

At the most local level, city councils and county boards typically draw those voting maps, but the ruling could be used to apply to them as well, said Crum, the law professor. 

Arizona is one of a handful of states where an independent commission, rather than the state legislature, determines both congressional and legislative districts. Outside of a court order, it can’t convene before the turn of the decade.

Petersen, the Arizona state senator, said he’s prepared to litigate if the state’s redistricting commission doesn’t take action to redraw districts that he said are unconstitutionally drawn. He doesn’t expect new maps before 2028, though.

“We’ve heard complaints from constituents that they don’t like the way their district was drawn,” he said. “We have some people here in Arizona that represent completely far-flung areas.

“I do think you’ll get a better outcome on some of these legislative districts” by removing race-based districting, he said.

Lawmakers in some states have tried to guard against the loss of federal protections by introducing their own state-level voting rights bills. Ten states have their own versions of the federal Voting Rights Act, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Virginia and Washington.

Lawmakers in at least 10 other states have introduced such bills this year alone: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Vermont.

The new Supreme Court ruling doesn’t render those laws unconstitutional, said Crum.

“But people who are seeking to undermine those state Voting Rights Acts are certainly going to rely on some of the themes” of the recent ruling, Crum said. “You might see them try and replicate some of the moves the court made.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct that Maryland has a state-level voting rights law, which was enacted last week.

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.

Louisiana is not experiencing ordinary political turbulence. We are watching democratic instability unfold in real time.

Within a matter of days, voters across this state have been forced to absorb three major disruptions at once: the dismantling of Black voting representation through the ruling in Louisiana v. Callais; the suspension of congressional primary elections already in progress; and a statewide constitutional amendment that could fundamentally reshape public education in East Baton Rouge Parish and beyond.

The timing could not be more critical. Election Day is May 16. Early voting began Saturday. Absentee ballots have already been distributed. Yet Gov. Jeff Landry’s executive order suspended Louisiana’s closed party congressional primaries after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the state’s congressional map. 

Voters are now left in a vacuum of information, told that congressional races will still appear on their ballots, but that their votes in these contests won’t count.

That should alarm every person in this state, regardless of party affiliation.

A democracy cannot function when election rules shift after the machinery of voting has already begun moving. This creates confusion and distrust precisely when public confidence is most fragile. 

Black communities, in particular, understand the historical weight of sudden procedural changes in elections. Louisiana does not get to separate this moment from that history.

This erosion of collective representation is not limited to the ballot box. It is also manifesting in the very structure of our local institutions. 

On the May 16 ballot voters are being asked to decide on Constitutional Amendment 2, which would formally recognize the St. George Community School System with independent authority to receive state funding and raise local revenues though taxes.

When coupled with its implementing legislation, the amendment mandates the transfer of public school lands, facilities and assets from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System to the new St. George system by June 30, 2027. Reports indicate that East Baton Rouge schools could lose roughly $100 million if this separation proceeds.

This is bigger than one city, one amendment or one election cycle. This is about fragmentation: the fragmentation of voting rights, public education and, ultimately, public trust. The people most harmed by this fracturing are always the communities with the fewest resources to absorb the blow: Black families, working-class families, disabled residents and children already navigating underfunded schools.

Supporters of these measures frame them as issues of local control or administrative necessity. But language matters less than outcomes. When systems repeatedly reorganize power away from collective accountability and toward isolated control structures, inequity expands. History has shown us this repeatedly.

The most dangerous part is how normalized this chaos is becoming. Louisianans are being conditioned to accept government by disruption. Maps change overnight, elections pause midstream, public assets become bargaining chips. 

That is not healthy governance. That is democratic erosion dressed in procedural language.

The people of Louisiana deserve clarity before elections begin, not after. They deserve stable representation and public institutions designed to serve communities rather than divide them into competing islands of power. Because once citizens begin believing their vote is conditional, their schools are negotiable, and their representation is disposable, democracy itself begins to fracture.

And fractured systems rarely fail equally.

President Donald Trump on Thursday moved to capitalize on a U.S. Supreme Court decision weakening the federal Voting Rights Act as he urged one governor to gerrymander his state and praised another for suspending an approaching primary.

The court’s decision on Wednesday struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as unconstitutional and empowered other Republican states to break apart districts where most residents are Black for a partisan advantage.

The opinion could reinvigorate Trump’s push for states to redraw their maps to give Republicans an edge in the November midterm elections. The president’s party typically performs poorly in the midterms and Trump’s approval has fallen in polls, making Democrats hopeful they can retake the U.S. House.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and state Attorney General Liz Murrill announced on Thursday that the state’s congressional primary election, set for mid-May, would be suspended. The pause gives state lawmakers time to draw a new map aimed at ousting at least one, if not two, Black Democrats.

Trump thanked Landry on his social media platform, Truth Social, for “moving so quickly to fix the Unconstitutionality” of the state’s map. In a separate post, Trump wrote that he had spoken with Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who faces calls to immediately gerrymander the state.

“I had a very good conversation with Governor Bill Lee, of Tennessee, this morning, wherein he stated that he would work hard to correct the unconstitutional flaw in the Congressional Maps of the Great State of Tennessee,” Trump wrote.

A spokesperson for Lee didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The redistricting rush 

Historically, states draw new maps once a decade after each census but eight states have now broken that norm after Trump urged Republicans to gerrymander. 

Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah have drawn fresh GOP-leaning maps, as well as Florida, whose legislature approved a gerrymander hours after the Supreme Court’s decision. California and Virginia have enacted new maps favorable to Democrats. 

Before Wednesday, the redistricting war was essentially a wash. But the court’s decision gives Republicans more options to gain the upper hand this year, if states can move quickly. 

Alabama, Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee are among the red states with upcoming primaries where lawmakers could theoretically still act. In some states — like Georgia and Tennessee — top Republicans haven’t ruled out action. In others, like Alabama and Georgia, GOP leaders have ruled out or played down the possibility of action this year.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, urged states to gerrymander their maps before the midterm elections.

“I think all states that have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully and I think they should do it before the midterms,” Johnson told CNN on Thursday. 

Dems also talk gerrymandering

Democrats have also floated the possibility of additional gerrymanders — whether this year or ahead of the 2028 election. 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on social media after the court’s decision that she would work with the legislature to change the state’s redistricting process. New York currently uses a commission system to draw maps, limiting opportunities for partisan gerrymandering.

At a news conference hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus on Wednesday, Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, suggested she would support additional Democratic gerrymanders.

“It values partisan politics over discrimination,” Sewell said of the court’s decision. “It’s really, really, really — I mean, it takes us back. So to the extent it’s urging, it’s inviting red states to totally take away all of the Democratic seats and be totally red, it also encourages blue states to do exactly the same.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision gutting the federal Voting Rights Act sent Black Democrats in the U.S. House reeling on Wednesday, as they confronted a new reality where Republicans could gerrymander some of them out of office and limit the ability of Black voters to elect candidates in the future.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus vowed to fight the court’s decision. They demanded fresh votes on federal voting rights legislation that has languished for several years and urged voters to turn out in the November election.

But facing a Republican-controlled Congress for at least the rest of the year and a Republican White House for at least the next two-and-a-half years, the prospect of major new voting rights legislation becoming law appears slim in the near term.

“It will pave the way for the greatest reduction in representation for Black and minority voters since the years following Reconstruction,” Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, said of the court’s decision, referring to the post-Civil War period in the South.

Republicans could ultimately secure up to 19 U.S. House seats nationally directly because of the Supreme Court’s decision, according to a projection by Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based progressive voting rights group, and the Black Voters Matter Fund, which advocates on behalf of Black voters. 

As of Aug. 4, 2025, Congress included 61 Black members of the House, including two delegates, and five senators, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Racial gerrymander

In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because it unnecessarily created a second district where a majority of residents are Black.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act had previously limited states from using maps that dilute the voting power of minority citizens. Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court’s three liberal justices, wrote in a dissent that the decision would now allow states to dilute the voting power of minority voters without legal consequences.

Republicans welcomed the decision, with many saying race should play no role in redistricting. President Donald Trump, informed about the ruling by reporters and told that it would help Republicans, exclaimed, “I love it.”

Florida lawmakers approved a new map within hours of the opinion. The proposal, offered by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this week, seeks to secure four additional House seats for Republicans. DeSantis had invoked the court’s decision, even before it was released, to push lawmakers to pass the new map.

GOP candidates and officials in other states urged state lawmakers to move quickly to redraw maps, even with primary elections approaching. Even if only a small number of states enact fresh gerrymanders this year, the Supreme Court decision will likely trigger another, bigger wave of redistricting over the next two years ahead of the 2028 election.

“The Court rightly acknowledged that the South has made extraordinary progress, and that laws designed for a different era do not reflect the present reality,” Alabama Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement.

Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a statement said the decision “restores fairness, strengthens confidence in our elections, and ensures every voter is treated equally under the law.”

The Supreme Court in 2019 allowed states to redraw maps for political advantage, ruling that federal courts would no longer adjudicate partisan gerrymandering cases. That previous decision, combined with Wednesday’s opinion, offers states a wide berth to draw maps that limit the voting power of minorities if they’re sold as politically necessary.

Bloody Sunday

Sewell represents a district that includes Selma, where the civil rights activist and future U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., along with other marchers, was beaten by state troopers in 1965 while walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an episode called Bloody Sunday. 

The beatings helped spur Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act later that year — the same law the Supreme Court weakened on Wednesday.

“The court just gave states permission to use partisan gerrymandering as a wholesale excuse to deny Black and minority voters a voice in our democracy,” Sewell said.

In Missouri, the Republican-controlled legislature earlier this year passed a map intended to oust Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who was Kansas City’s first Black mayor. The state Supreme Court is weighing a legal challenge that could keep the map from taking effect before the November election.

On Wednesday, Cleaver in a statement called the opinion “deeply disrespectful of the generations of African Americans and civil rights advocates who gave their freedom, their blood, and even their lives to make it possible.” 

Obama criticizes ruling

Former President Barack Obama condemned the decision as another example of how a majority of the current Supreme Court seems intent on “abandoning its vital role” in ensuring equal participation in American democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach.

“The good news is that such setbacks can be overcome,” Obama said in a statement. “But that will only happen if citizens across the country who cherish our democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers – not just in the upcoming midterms or in high profile races, but in every election and every level.

Several Democrats said Congress should pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a Democratic-sponsored measure that seeks to restore preclearance — a requirement that states with a history of discrimination obtain federal approval before making voting changes. The Supreme Court effectively halted preclearance in 2013.

The House, under Democratic control, passed the legislation in 2021 but it stalled in the Senate. Democrats could likely pass the bill again if they retake the House in November but would face a likely filibuster again in the Senate. Even if they managed to pass the bill, Trump would be virtually certain to veto it.

Rep. Cleo Fields, a Louisiana Democrat whose district was ruled an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, sought to place the court’s decision in a broader, historical context. 

Looking ahead to midterms

Recalling Louisiana’s Jim Crow past, he said the state used to require individuals to recite the Constitution’s preamble before registering to vote.

“If you tell me I’ve got to jump a certain height, I could probably do that. Tell me I’ve got to run a certain distance, I could probably do that, too. But if you tell me I have to be white to serve in Congress from Louisiana, I can’t do nothing about that — I need some help from my government,” Fields said, adding that’s why Congress needs to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the Supreme Court’s conservative majority “illegitimate” and said the opinion was unacceptable but not unexpected. 

While acknowledging the decision represents a setback, America has an opportunity to mount a comeback in the upcoming election, he said.

Jeffries, who is set to become speaker if Democrats retake the House in November, said one of the chamber’s first actions would be to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

“So we can end the era of voter suppression in America once and for all,” Jeffries said.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office on Monday invoked an upcoming landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the role of race in drawing congressional districts to justify the Republican’s proposed gerrymander.

“The use of race in redistricting should never happen,” the governor’s general counsel, David Axelman, wrote in a memo unveiling a map that aims to hand Republicans four additional U.S. House seats in Florida.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court delivered an opinion sharply weakening a major portion of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Even before the decision, Republicans and Democrats across the country were scrambling to get ahead of the court’s anticipated ruling. 

The rush comes even as state legislative sessions wind down and the window to redraw maps rapidly closes ahead of the midterm elections in November — likely pushing most redistricting battles into the 2028 election cycle.

The opinion in the case, Louisiana v. Callais, could reverberate for decades. The court’s conservative majority significantly curtailed the consideration of race when drawing legislative maps. 

Until now, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has limited states from using maps that dilute the voting power of minority citizens.

“If the Supreme Court does decide to gut or significantly weaken Section 2 of the VRA, we’re very concerned that it would give, basically, the green light to states to racially gerrymander,” Michael McNulty, policy director at Issue One, a group focused on protecting American democracy, said in an interview ahead of the decision.

Republicans could ultimately secure up to 19 U.S. House seats nationally directly because of the Supreme Court’s decision, according to a projection by Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based progressive voting rights group, and the Black Voters Matter Fund, which advocates on behalf of Black voters. At the state level, the groups have projected that Republicans could gain up to 200 state legislative seats across the South. 

“It is hard to overstate what an earthquake this will be for American politics,” Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, wrote in a blog post following the opinion’s release on Wednesday.

Louisiana case

A group of white voters challenged Louisiana’s congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander after the state in 2024 created a second district where a majority of voters are Black. 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices agreed, ruling 6-3 that the map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because the state didn’t need to create a second majority-minority district.

In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “none of the historical evidence presented by plaintiffs came close to showing an objective likelihood that the State’s challenged map was the result of intentional racial discrimination.”

Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court’s three liberal justices, wrote in a dissent that the Supreme Court has “had its sights set” on the Voting Rights Act for more than a decade.

“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote.

Following the opinion, Republican-led legislatures across the South are expected to move to break apart Democratic districts where a majority of residents are Black or from other minority groups. 

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, called on the state legislature to reconvene and redraw the state’s congressional districts to create another Republican-held seat in Memphis. Blackburn, who is running for governor, said an additional seat is essential to cement President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves last week announced a special session to redraw the state’s Supreme Court districts, to begin 21 days after the court releases its decision.

“It is a decision that could (and in my view should) forever change the way we draw electoral maps,” Reeves said in a statement announcing the session.

Although the Supreme Court case centered on Louisiana, state officials are likely out of time to adopt a new map for this year’s election. The primary election is set for May 16.

Still, Louisiana will be free to pursue redistricting next year.

U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, Sr., a Democrat who represents one of the state’s two majority-minority districts, said the court’s decision was a “devastating blow” to the promise of equal representation.

“This ruling is about far more than lines on a map — it’s about whether Black Louisianians will have a meaningful opportunity to make their voices heard,” Carter said in a statement.

The redistricting wars of 2026

As of 2024, roughly a third of U.S. House seats represented majority-minority districts — 122 held by Democrats and 26 held by Republicans, according to estimates by Ballotpedia. Texas and California account for nearly half of all the districts.

Seven states have already taken the extraordinary step of redrawing their maps this year after President Donald Trump urged Republicans to draw lines that maximize partisan advantage ahead of the midterms. Maps are typically redrawn every 10 years after the census.

Texas and California struck first, followed by Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah. Virginia voters last week approved a redraw, and Florida lawmakers approved a new map Wednesday. 

All told, Republicans may emerge from the redistricting war with a small net advantage of a handful of seats if the Florida plan is enacted and the other maps are upheld.

The calendar will prove a major obstacle to additional gerrymanders this year. Primary elections have already been held in some southern states and ballots have been distributed in others. 

Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas have already held primaries, while ballots have been distributed in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. 

But after November the clock resets, giving states more than a year to pursue further changes to their maps before the 2028 election.

“We are much more concerned about the impact on 2028 and beyond that that would have, letting these politicians basically just pick their voters instead of the voters picking them,” McNulty said.

John R. Lewis bill

As Democrats look ahead to Callais’ likely fallout in the coming years, they have begun urgently calling for action in Congress and at the state level. They also say the decision emphasizes the stakes of this year’s elections.

“Today is a devastating day for democracy and a wake-up call for all those who seek to protect it,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement.

Democrats in Congress have repeatedly offered the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Named after the civil rights activist and Georgia congressman who died in 2020, the legislation aims to strengthen Section 2 and other elements of the current Voting Rights Act, though it’s unclear whether the bill would be constitutional under the Callais decision.

The U.S. House, under Democratic control, passed the legislation in 2021 but it was filibustered in the Senate. Some lawmakers are speaking about the measure again, and Democrats may take control of Congress in November’s elections—though they would still face President Donald Trump in the White House. 

“We can and must revive the Voting Rights Act,” Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat and the ranking member of the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections, said at a shadow hearing on voting rights on Monday.

For their part, Republicans hailed the Supreme Court decision as long overdue.

U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a statement said “activists” for too long had manipulated the redistricting process to achieve political outcomes, dividing Americans in the process.

“The Supreme Court made clear that our elections should be decided by voters, not engineered through unconstitutional mandates,” Hudson said.

Voting Rights Act over the years

Over more than a decade, the Supreme Court has narrowed the potency of the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 law banning racial discrimination in voting that came as Congress battled Jim Crow laws in southern states. 

The measure was intended to help enforce the U.S. Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments, which guarantee equal protection under the law and prohibit denying the right to vote on the basis of race.

In 2013, the court effectively halted preclearance — the requirement that some states and local governments with a history of discrimination obtain federal permission before changing their voting practices. At the time of the decision, most southern states and a handful of others were subject to preclearance.

The Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that federal courts cannot review allegations of partisan gerrymandering. The decision cleared the way for state lawmakers to gerrymander their maps for political advantage without fear they would be second-guessed by federal judges. 

The opinion helped empower a wave of gerrymanders after the 2020 census and set the stage for this year’s mid-decade redistricting.

Turning to the legislatures

Facing a bleak federal landscape, some voting rights advocates are increasingly turning to state legislatures. The Supreme Court decision undercutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act will likely intensify efforts to advance state-level legislation.

“Because political participation is inherently local, it is imperative to press for protections at the ground level,” Todd Cox, associate director counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice legal organization, said at the shadow hearing.

Some Democratic state lawmakers already introduced measures in anticipation of an unfavorable Supreme Court decision.

The Illinois House last week approved a state constitutional amendment that would require districts to be drawn “to ensure that no citizen is denied an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of his or her choice on account of race.”

The Illinois amendment would also require, where practical, the creation of racial coalition or influence districts — terms that refer to districts where racial minorities together constitute a majority of residents. The measure, which must also pass the state Senate before going to voters, was a pre-response to the Callais opinion.

“This will ensure that Illinois will always recognize the fundamental principle that a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people must include all the people,” Illinois Democratic House Speaker Emanuel Welch told reporters after the amendment advanced.

Illinois Republicans have cast the amendment as a Democratic power grab. The state has some of the most gerrymandered maps in the nation, Illinois House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, a Republican, said in a statement. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project has given Illinois’ maps an overall “F” grade.

“Let’s be clear: this has nothing to do with strengthening democracy,” McCombie said. “It’s about locking in one-party control at any cost.”

A lawsuit seeking to throw out Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they’re unconstitutionally anti-competitive was dismissed Tuesday by a panel of three circuit court judges. 

The lawsuit was brought last summer by bipartisan business group Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy Coalition, represented by the progressive nonprofit Law Forward. 

For more than a decade, Wisconsin has been a national symbol of the effects of extreme partisan gerrymandering and Tuesday’s dismissal comes amid a effort by both major parties to redraw maps ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. 

A national mid-decade redistricting tit-for-tat started last year when Texas Republicans drew new maps, at President Donald Trump’s request, in an attempt to limit the number of Democrats in the House of Representatives. A number of other Republican states, including Missouri and North Carolina, followed suit. In response, voters in California and Virginia voted to change state laws to allow Democrats to re-draw their maps to minimize Republican seats. 

This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced a bill that would redraw his state’s maps to give Republicans four more seats. 

While both parties have drawn political maps to favor their own candidates, only congressional Democrats have proposed a bill that would ban partisan gerrymandering. In Wisconsin, state Democrats have long pushed for the adoption of a non-partisan redistricting commission. 

Wisconsin’s current congressional maps were adopted in 2021 by the state Supreme Court after Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans in the Legislature were unable to reach a deal on their own. When forced to weigh in, the Supreme Court instituted a “least change” rule that required any maps proposed to the Court to hew as closely as possible to the maps instituted by Republicans in 2011. The map the Court chose was proposed by Evers, a Democrat, but resulted in a heavily Republican congressional delegation, since they were drawn to adhere to the “least change” standard.

The 2011 political maps and the least change decision allowed Republicans to hold six of the state’s eight congressional seats. The state Supreme Court tossed out the state’s legislative maps in 2023 — which remained heavily gerrymandered under the “least change” standard — on the grounds that the shapes of the districts, some of which were broken into noncontiguous parts, were illegal. 

Over the years, the court system has heard a number of challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they are an illegal partisan gerrymander. A separate three-judge panel dismissed another lawsuit on partisan gerrymandering grounds late last month. 

Despite that dismissal, the Law Forward lawsuit argued that its claims were new and therefore deserved to be considered by the courts. The lawsuit argued that the maps were drawn to unfairly give incumbents of both parties an advantage, pointing to the fact that only one of the state’s congressional districts, western Wisconsin’s 3rd CD, is regularly decided by a single-digit margin. 

“After the Wisconsin Legislature adopted the 2011 congressional map, congressional races over the ensuing decade were, as intended, highly uncompetitive,” the lawsuit stated. “The Court’s adoption … of the ‘least change’ congressional map necessarily perpetuated the essential features — and the primary flaws — of the 2011 congressional map, including the 2011 congressional map’s intentional and effective effort to suppress competition.”

Republicans and their allies intervened in the case, arguing that it should be dismissed because the anti-competitive argument treads the same ground as the partisan gerrymandering claims the Court has already declined to hear. 

The three-judge panel, made up of Dane County Judge David Conway, Marathon County Judge Michael Moran and Portage County Judge Patricia Baker, agreed and dismissed the case, noting that the makeup of the state’s political maps is a question best left to the political branches of government, not the judicial system.

“Plaintiffs’ anti-competitive gerrymandering claims are functionally equivalent to partisan gerrymandering claims, at least for purposes of the political question analysis,” the judges wrote. “In a two-party system, partisan fairness and competitiveness are correlated: a more competitive map is typically a fairer map, whereas less competition usually means less partisan fairness. The objective of both theories is to change ‘the partisan makeup of districts,’ whether by achieving proportional representation, electoral competitiveness, or both.” 

Doug Poland, Law Forward’s director of litigation, said in a statement Tuesday that it’s disappointing the panel dismissed the case before it had the opportunity to hear evidence. He also said the panel’s ruling will be appealed directly to the Supreme Court. 

“This is the first anti-competitive gerrymandering case ever filed in Wisconsin courts, and it deserves to be heard,” Poland said. “We believe that the circuit court was wrong in concluding that anti-competitive gerrymandering is ‘functionally equivalent’ to partisan gerrymandering. They are different claims, based on different evidence, that target different ways of manipulating representation to the detriment of voters.”

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The race by each party to redraw U.S. House districts in their favor could be headed for a draw after Tuesday’s big win for Democrats in Virginia, though major shifts are still possible before crucial midterm elections in November.

Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment that clears the path for the state’s legislature, controlled by Democrats, to redraw congressional district lines to benefit Democrats in 10 of the commonwealth’s 11 U.S. House districts. 

That could net the party four new seats in Virginia, though state court cases challenging the proposal are still to be decided.

Former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Florida Democrat who now leads the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University, said the results showed a dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump and the nation’s capital in general.

“It sends a clear message to the administration, to the White House, to Washington, D.C., that they’re not happy with the status quo, with the policies that are coming out of Washington, that they want to see a change,” she said in an interview Wednesday.

After 10 months of bitter back-and-forth that began with Trump urging Texas Republicans to revise their congressional map to help gain seats in the House, neither party has netted a significant advantage.

But the tit-for-tat may have a lasting harmful effect on U.S. democracy, experts said.

If Virginia’s proposal goes into effect, Democrats would be favored in one more House district nationwide than they had been in 2024, according to the nonpartisan election research organization Ballotpedia.

Further changes, including the Florida Legislature potentially redrawing its House map and a U.S. Supreme Court decision to gut the federal Voting Rights Act’s protection of majority-Black districts in Southern states, could tilt the advantage back to the GOP. 

Republicans narrowly control the chamber now, 217-212, with one independent and five vacancies after Georgia Democrat David Scott died Wednesday. 

The president’s party typically loses House seats in midterm elections, and Trump’s sagging poll numbers and the results of special elections do not suggest anything different this year.

Good for Democrats, bad for democracy

Elected Democrats largely framed the Virginia results as a win for free and fair elections.

“Virginia voters have spoken, and tonight they pushed back against a President who claims he is ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress,” Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, wrote on X.

But the entire cycle could deepen political polarization, leading to less compromise and policymaking in Congress and ceding power to the executive branch, Erik Nisbet, the director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy at Northwestern University, said Wednesday.

“There were some quotes today from some leading Democrats about how you can’t bring a knife to a gunfight, and this is the only way to, like, save democracy, and sort of rationalizing it,” he said. “It’s still bad for democracy long term… It means that Congress, long term, is even more polarized and ineffectual.”

Mucarsel-Powell, who represented one of the country’s few competitive House districts, also said redistricting would make legislating more difficult.

“Redistricting doesn’t necessarily help the country overall,” she said. “As we continue to become more polarized, I think that having these maps being redrawn to favor one or the other party is just going to deepen the polarization. I think it makes it more difficult for members to be able to reach consensus. I’ve seen it, right? When you represent a solid red or a solid blue district, there’s really no incentive to compromise.”

Republicans sour on Virginia result

Republicans, from Trump on down, complained Wednesday that the result was unfair because it could give Democrats 91% of the U.S. House seats in a state where the party’s most recent presidential candidate gained only 52% of the vote.

In a post to his social media site Wednesday afternoon, Trump said the result was illegitimate — repeating, without evidence, his frequent assertion in elections he has lost that mail ballots were fraudulent — and called for courts to “fix” the result.

“A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!” Trump wrote. “All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’ Where have I heard that before — And the Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory!”

Questionable strategy

But the proposed Virginia map would only even the playing field after Trump initiated a rare mid-decade redistricting cycle last year by asking Texas officials to redraw the state’s districts. 

Texas’ new map could net Republicans five more House seats. But its creation kicked off an arms race that included California drawing five new Democratic-leaning districts, effectively neutralizing Texas’ move. 

Legislatures in Missouri and North Carolina then voluntarily redrew their maps, while an Ohio constitutional amendment and a Utah Supreme Court decision led to new district lines in those states.

Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under Republican President George W. Bush, bemoaned the Virginia results but called them a self-inflicted wound. States should stick to redistricting once a decade after a census, he said, blasting the GOP strategy to attempt mid-decade redistricting in some states.

“The GOP will now lose net seats across the country. If you’re going to pick a fight, at least win it. The other side will always fight back,” he wrote. “All this was foreseeable and avoidable. We should not have started this fight.” 

Fleischer linked to a post he’d written in August criticizing the GOP effort in Texas as that state geared up for a vote on the new map. “Mid-census change” was not the way to win more seats in the House, he’d said.

National Democrats celebrated.

“House Democrats have crushed Donald Trump’s national gerrymandering scheme,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York wrote on social media Tuesday night. “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”

What’s next?

Two more decisions could further alter the landscape for U.S. House races before November.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last year in a case challenging a Voting Rights Act provision that has been interpreted to require majority-Black districts in Southern states equal to their population. Louisiana is challenging a lower court ruling that threw out a map in which only one of the state’s six districts was majority-Black, though Black people make up about one-third of the state’s population.

Depending on the scope and timing of the conservative court’s ruling, several safe Democratic seats in the South could be in jeopardy.

And in Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called the state legislature into a special session, scheduled to begin next week, to consider a redistricting effort and other issues.

‘Dummymanders’?

Florida Republicans have not fully endorsed a redistricting push, which could ultimately make some incumbents’ districts less reliably red. Gerrymandering relies on spreading a party’s voters across more districts, making some individual races more difficult, especially in a potential wave election year.

“Republicans are pushing back, saying that it’s going to actually lessen the power that they have in some of these districts,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “Because if you have (a district favoring Republicans by five points), with all the overperformance that we’ve seen, including here in the state of Florida, it’s very likely going to favor the Democrats.”

Jeffries in a Wednesday morning news conference practically dared Florida Republicans to dilute their U.S. House districts, comparing the effort to the Texas map that he said was not as Republican as they thought and calling the entire GOP effort a “dummymander” that would backfire.

“F around and find out,” Jeffries said. “If they go down the road of a DeSantis dummymander, the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans, who are on the run right now.” 

“The Republicans are dummymandering their way into the minority before a single vote is cast,” he added. “They started this war, and we’re going to finish it.”

Virginia voters on Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment allowing mid-decade congressional redistricting, a move expected to dramatically reshape the state’s political map and potentially shift its congressional delegation from a closely divided 6-5 split to a heavily Democratic-leaning 10-1 advantage.

By 8:50 p.m., the measure passed by a vote of 50.7-49.3% out of 2.5 million ballots cast, according to unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections, clearing the way for lawmakers to redraw district lines outside the traditional once-a-decade census cycle. The winning margin continued to increase throughout the night as more votes were tallied. 

Supporters argued the amendment gives Virginia flexibility to respond to aggressive redistricting efforts in several Republican-led states at the urging of President Donald Trump, while critics warned it opens the door to partisan gerrymandering and undermines long-standing constitutional guardrails.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger said in a statement Tuesday evening that voters “approved a temporary measure to push back against a president who claims he is ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress,” adding that Virginians “responded the right way: at the ballot box.” 

She said she plans to campaign with candidates across the commonwealth ahead of the midterms and emphasized her commitment to restoring the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission after the 2030 census.

Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, said the results reflect what he described as a reaffirmation of democratic principles, arguing that voters “answered a question about the nature of our democracy … in favor of the people.” 

He said Virginians acted in response to what he called “unprecedented gerrymandering in other states,” adding that “fairness won” and “accountability won,” and that the outcome shows “the people will decide.”

Virginia House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, said the outcome sends a national signal, arguing that voters rejected efforts to “rig our democracy” and instead affirmed that “power belongs to the people.” He said the vote could shape the 2026 midterms, adding that Virginians “stepped up and leveled the playing field for the entire country” and that “when the stakes are highest, we lead.”

Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said the vote delivers “a massive blow to the GOP plot to rig control of Congress,” praising Virginia voters for what she described as answering a national call to protect democracy. 

At the same time, she cautioned that “the fight is far from over,” arguing that redistricting battles will continue to play out in state legislatures and that upcoming elections will be critical in determining who draws maps and holds power in the years ahead.

Virginia House GOP Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, said Tuesday’s outcome was “not unexpected,” arguing the process was “tilted” by what he described as “misleading ballot language and a massive spending advantage.” 

He said legal challenges will continue, adding that “the ballot box was never the final word here” and that Republicans will keep pushing for “fair maps, transparent process, and equal representation for every Virginian.”

Special session sparks fast-moving redistricting push 

The effort to change Virginia’s redistricting rules began abruptly in late October, during a special legislative session that had been called to address budget matters but quickly veered into a broader political fight.

On Oct. 27 — days before the Nov. 4 statewide elections — Democratic lawmakers unveiled plans to pursue a constitutional amendment allowing congressional maps to be redrawn outside the traditional post-census cycle. 

Within hours, the proposal ignited a sharp debate over timing, process and political intent.

Scott framed the move as a response to national redistricting battles, saying at the time, “I think we have an opportunity now to send a message to the rest of the country that we’re not going to stand by while you rig this election. We will do everything in our power to level the playing field we were talking about.”

Republicans, meanwhile, questioned both the substance and the setting. Del. Michael Webert, R-Fauquier, said the special session had been called for budget work, not constitutional changes.

“We went into a special session to solve a very specific problem. It was not meant to be used as a tool to continuously identify issues and keep what they’re doing,” Webert said. “We shouldn’t (have been) in two sessions at the same time (and) because of that confusion, I believe … it delegitimizes specific legislative processes.”

The session’s temperature rose further when Senate Democrats blocked the reading of a communication from then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who had sharply criticized the effort.

“I am disappointed to see the General Assembly reconvening this week to ram through a constitutional amendment on redistricting only seven days before the close of our 2025 statewide and House of Delegates election and with over one million voters already casting their ballot,” Youngkin wrote.

On the Senate floor, Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin, appealed to what he described as Virginia’s past bipartisan approach to redistricting reform.

“Sometimes we must overcome our partisan desires and do what is right for the commonwealth as a whole,” Stanley said. “We looked Virginia voters in the eye, and promised them something fundamental, that Virginia would pick their representatives, and not the other way around. What message do we send to them if we walk away now?”

Despite the divisions, lawmakers moved quickly. On the same day, Democrats released the amendment’s language, outlining a framework for mid-cycle redistricting subject to voter approval. 

The House advanced the measure the following day, and the Senate approved it on Oct. 31 in a party-line vote, sending it forward in the multi-step constitutional process. That process required the amendment to pass again in a subsequent legislative session. 

When lawmakers reconvened in January, the proposal moved forward — but soon became entangled in a series of legal challenges.

Legal battles complicate road to the ballot 

In late January, a Virginia court struck down the amendment that had been slated for the April ballot, casting uncertainty over whether voters would ultimately weigh in.

In a 22-page ruling, Tazewell County Circuit Court Judge Jack C. Hurley found that the legislature acted unlawfully in approving the redistricting amendment during a special session just days before the Nov. 4 election. Hurley concluded that lawmakers exceeded the scope of that session, violated their own procedural rules and failed to comply with constitutional and statutory requirements governing amendments to the Virginia Constitution.

The state’s highest court soon reversed that trajectory. In February, the Supreme Court of Virginia allowed the referendum to proceed, clearing the way for the issue to appear on the ballot.

“Certainly the General Assembly was clear with the amendment process they put forward, and now it’s up to voters,” Spanberger said at the time, mere weeks after taking her oath of office.  

At the same time, Democrats began outlining what new congressional lines could look like.

A proposed map released in early February would significantly reshape district boundaries and was widely seen as favoring Democrats across most of the state’s 11 congressional districts.

Republicans escalated their opposition later that month, filing an emergency lawsuit seeking to block the vote and challenging the amendment process itself — a move that the same Tazewell County judge granted but that only applied to his jurisdiction. 

Once again, the Supreme Court of Virginia stepped in, granting a petition for review of the case and staying the temporary restraining order, which allowed the election to move forward statewide. 

However, the justices emphasized their decision does not resolve the underlying legal claims about whether the General Assembly followed proper procedures in advancing the amendment.

Meanwhile, the referendum drew national attention, with prominent Democrats — including former President Barack Obama — voicing support while Virginia Republicans intensified their warnings as the campaign entered its final stretch.

On Tuesday evening, Obama praised the outcome on X, writing, “Congratulations, Virginia! Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven’t done it yet,” and thanking voters for “showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back.”

Campaign messaging grew increasingly contentious in March, particularly after mailers opposing the amendment invoked civil rights era imagery, prompting backlash and public criticism. 

Some Republicans defended the mailers, adding to the broader political dispute surrounding the vote.

Early voting data added another layer of uncertainty, with turnout showing strength in Republican-leaning areas even as both parties ramped up efforts to mobilize voters statewide.

In the final weeks, Spanberger balanced her governing responsibilities with public support for the amendment, while Youngkin returned to the campaign trail urging voters to reject it and continued to press for court intervention.

In her statement Tuesday, Spanberger said that she remained “committed to ensuring Virginia’s bipartisan redistricting commission gets back to work after the 2030 census, and to protecting the process Virginians voted to create.”

FULL COVERAGE: Virginia redistricting referendum

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has called lawmakers to the Capitol on Tuesday for a special session to ban partisan gerrymandering. 

It remains to be seen whether Republicans, who control the Legislature, will shrug off Evers’ request as they have in past special sessions on issues like abortion rights and gun safety. It’s possible, given the way political winds of the 2026 midterm elections appear to favor Democrats, Republican lawmakers could come to the table, though not likely.

Last week liberal Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor defeated conservative Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar by 20 points for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The race, while technically nonpartisan, saw public support split along party lines. 

Evers, who is not running for reelection, has proposed a constitutional amendment, which requires two consecutive approvals by the Legislature in separate sessions and ratification by voters. The language of the amendment is just two sentences: “Districts shall not provide a disproportionate advantage or disadvantage to any political party. Partisan gerrymandering is prohibited.” 

Following a bill signing last week, Evers said his office was continuing discussions with Republican and Democratic leaders about his proposal. 

“We’re still working with legislative leaders and will continue doing that until that moment when they come back,” Evers said. 

State lawmakers hold the power to draw legislative and congressional districts in Wisconsin, typically once a decade after the federal government conducts the U.S. Census. Democrats, who last controlled the Assembly, Senate and governor’s office during the 2009-10 legislative session, did not pass any redistricting changes ahead of the 2010 U.S. Census and lost power to enact policy after Republicans took control of the executive and legislative branches that election year. 

“The Democratic trifecta was faced with a choice: secure fair maps for prosperity, or wait and hold out for a possible retaining power for another decade,” Evers said when he signed the special session executive order in March. “And we know how that story worked.”

In 2011, Republican lawmakers crafted maps that kept the GOP in power for more than a decade, even after Democrats won statewide offices in 2018. The Republican-drawn maps remained in place until the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck them down in late 2023. Cases challenging the state’s congressional maps are still making their way through the courts, but decisions are unlikely ahead of the midterm elections. 

Evers signed new legislative maps into law in 2024, and Democrats flipped 14 legislative seats under the new maps in an otherwise Republican-friendly election year. Those gains set up real competition for control of the Legislature this fall. 

The challenging political environment for Republicans in 2026 could create an avenue for some kind of reform if GOP lawmakers are interested, redistricting experts said in interviews with Wisconsin Watch. 

Legislative Republicans will have to consider what kind of consequences might come if Democrats take some form of power during the 2026 elections, said Jonathan Cervas, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University who specializes in redistricting and served as one of the consultants to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the case challenging the state’s legislative maps. Republicans in that case compromised with Evers on the best path forward rather than letting the consultants draw maps, Cervas said. 

“I really liked that they decided to compromise. I thought that was maybe the best case scenario outcome, though it may not have felt like the best case scenario for any of the other parties,” Cervas said. “I’m not sure that that’s what the Democrats wanted. I’m not sure it’s what the Republicans wanted. But I think from the voter standpoint, that’s a really good outcome.” 

Cervas and Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington, D.C., office, both said there are similarities between the political environment in Wisconsin today and in the Virginia legislature around 2020 that led to redistricting reform ahead of the state’s 2021 map-drawing process. 

Virginia lawmakers initiated a constitutional amendment to create a bipartisan redistricting commission in 2019 when Republicans still held power in the state legislature. 

Democrats won a majority in Virginia elections that year, and the state party eventually objected to the constitutional amendment. Virginia voters in 2020 approved the bipartisan redistricting commission that shifted full control of map-drawing power away from state lawmakers. In 2021 the group failed to agree on legislative or congressional maps, and the decision fell to the Virginia Supreme Court. 

Now in 2026, Virginia voters will decide in a special election on April 21 whether to temporarily undo the 2020 changes and approve mid-decade Democratic-drawn congressional maps that could give the party four more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. It’s part of the redistricting wave initiated after President Donald Trump called on Texas and other Republican states to enact mid-decade redistricting ahead of the midterms to help Republicans hold on to the U.S. House.

“You just see this unraveling of the reforms that were once seen as promising, and largely because it’s such an unbalanced playing field,” Cervas said. 

What key players are saying

Longtime Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, who is not seeking reelection, was critical of Evers’ proposal in mid-March, but told reporters he would be open to working with the governor on something that is nonpartisan.

“If we could negotiate and try to find something that is truly nonpartisan, you never know,” Vos said. 

Vos added that drawing district lines “should be about demographics. It should be how many people, what are the municipal lines and all those kinds of things. It shouldn’t be about how people vote.” 

That’s not how the process worked when Republicans drew the lines in 2011. Instead the maps were drawn in secretive conditions with computer programs that allowed the districts to be calibrated to protect the Republican majority even in a Democratic wave election. When Evers and the Legislature couldn’t agree on maps after the 2020 Census, the then-conservative state Supreme Court ruled the new maps should adhere to a “least change” principle that had no basis in law or the constitution.

A spokesperson for Vos did not respond to additional questions from Wisconsin Watch last week about where Assembly Republicans stand ahead of the special session. Nor did a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, who in March announced he is also not seeking reelection later this year. 

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor, said at a press conference in Madison last week that he would also want to see a nonpartisan proposal from Evers.

“He should produce a nonpartisan bill,” Tiffany said. “He should produce nonpartisan ideas because what we see is that his ideas are consistently partisan.” 

While Republicans hold power over the Legislature’s moves this week, Evers also faces potential objections about a partisan gerrymandering ban from some members of his own party. 

Neither Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, nor Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, expressed clear support for Evers’ plan following the governor’s executive order in March. 

Both noted the challenges gerrymandered maps favoring Republicans pose for Democrats participating in the legislative process, but said they supported a future redistricting process that allowed voters to be heard.

The top Democratic candidates running for governor told Wisconsin Watch they support some form of nonpartisan redistricting, even in the wake of Taylor’s double-digit victory margin in the state Supreme Court race.

“Wisconsinites have been subjected to one of the worst gerrymanders in the nation for too long,” Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said in a statement. “Letting the people’s voices be heard is the very foundation of democracy. We owe it to every Wisconsin voter, Republican or Democrat, to fix this system once and for all.”

Joel Brennan, the former Department of Administration secretary, said the gerrymandered Republican maps “deeply harmed the state.” Fair maps now have voters “choosing their own representatives, not the other way around,” Brennan said.

Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong said she supports a nonpartisan commission to create fair maps without “elected officials meddling in that process.” Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez said Wisconsin needs to keep map drawing “outside of political hands” to stop the power swing that happens when Democrats or Republicans come into power.  

Madison Sen. Kelda Roys, who stood with Evers when he signed the special session executive order in March, said she supports fair maps and a constitutional amendment to ban gerrymandering. 

“The party that earns the most votes should get the most seats,” she said in a statement. 

Missy Hughes, the former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO, and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes pointed to mid-decade redistricting efforts led by Trump in Republican states ahead of the midterms. 

Hughes said nonpartisan redistricting methods are necessary to protect Wisconsin voters.

“Wisconsinites deserve it, and as Governor I will use every lever at my disposal to ensure that our vote is protected from Donald Trump, and our maps are fairly drawn,” she said in a statement.

Barnes said fair maps are important, but he also doesn’t want Wisconsin to “fight with one arm tied behind our backs” if there continues to be future partisan redistricting pushes from the federal government. 

“There should be fair, nonpartisan redistricting all across the country,” Barnes said. “If that is not the case across the country and Wisconsin finds ourselves in a position where we ultimately have to save democracy, we need to look at all available options.”

As Democrats surge, will Republicans take Tony Evers up on a special session to ban partisan gerrymandering? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.