On April 29, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Louisiana v. Callais, weakening Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and triggering a wave of mid-decade congressional redistricting that could reshape the U.S. House of Representatives ahead of the November midterm elections.
The decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, which created a second majority-Black district, as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. This decision made it more difficult to create minority-majority districts and tightened the standards for race-conscious redistricting under the Voting Rights Act.
The Court did not fully overturn Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Instead, it heightened the burden on the plaintiffs by requiring that there was proof of “present-day” intentional racial discrimination. Many legal experts have concluded that this standard will be extremely difficult to meet. Justice Elena Kagan, writing the dissent for the three justices who voted against the ruling, herself, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said that the ruling renders Section 2 “all but a dead letter.”
Signed into law in 1965 at the height of the civil rights movement, the Voting Rights Act was designed to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment and dismantle disenfranchising Jim Crow practices. Section 2 prohibits any voting practice that results in racial discrimination. In the 1986 decision Thornburg v. Gingles, plaintiffs could prove a Section 2 violation by showing that a minority group was large and compact enough to form a majority in a district, but was consistently outvoted by a bloc of white voters. That created these majority-minority districts across the country and led to the first election of Black and Latino representatives for the first time since Reconstruction.
The Callais decision requires plaintiffs to submit sample maps that satisfy all of a state’s political goals and to present strong evidence of intentional discrimination in the present day rather than discussing the effects of past discrimination.
Within days, Republican led states moved to redraw their maps. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new map on May 4 that could shift his state’s House representation from 20-8 to 24-4. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a map that splits Memphis into three Republican-leaning districts and eliminates the state’s only black majority district. State Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) criticized the redraw, and state Rep. Justin Jones walked out of the chamber in protest during voting.
Combined with earlier redraws in Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, and Missouri, Republicans could net more than a dozen House seats, according to Real Clear Politics, a non-partisan media company. The push follows President Donald Trump’s order last summer for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to carve out five additional Republican leaning districts to protect the party’s House majority.
Democrats have been responding. California voters approved a new map projected to add up to five Democratic seats, and party leaders in Virginia and Maryland have signaled interest in following suit.
With Trump’s net approval at -18.4 points and Republicans holding a three-seat House majority, the redistricting wars may ultimately decide which party controls Congress come the new terms in January, not the American people.
