Washington– WASHINGTON (AP) — Castration by the Supreme Court in Voting Rights Act The last remaining major item is likely to trigger a political collapse — an event that starts small but gains momentum as it spreads across the national map.
In this case, the benefit will accrue to Republicans who seek to maintain the majority in the House of Representatives, perhaps for many years to come.
Such a change seemed more plausible on Wednesday after the court’s conservative majority signaled A Prepare to limit race-based areas Under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The landmark civil rights law requires the drawing of legislative districts that allow minorities to choose representatives of their choice. This has created majority black and Latino districts that reliably vote Democratic in some of the most conservative states in the country.
Plaintiffs in one of those states, Louisiana, took the case to the Supreme Court after a federal judge ordered the state to redraw the congressional map to include a second, majority-Black district, a district a Democrat won last year. If the plaintiffs win their case, it could turn that district back into one more likely to be represented by a Republican and perhaps even eliminate its other Democratic seat, which was also mandated under the Voting Rights Act.
That could spread across the South, where the Democratic group Fair Fight found there are 19 VRA-mandated seats held by Democrats that Republicans could redraw in their favor.
“I’m really concerned that, given the political climate we’re in and the conservative nature of this court, and then to roll back affirmative action and give more executive power to the president, this is not going to end well for us,” said Rep. Terry Sewell, an Alabama Democrat.
Republicans have increasingly complained about Section 2, arguing that it forces them either to violate the Constitution by using racial factors in redistricting or to be sued if they are not sufficiently concerned about racial groups that lean Democratic.
“We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Morell told reporters on Wednesday.
If the court sides with Louisiana, some Democratic members of Congress said they hoped the decision would be narrowly tailored to that issue rather than a sweeping attack on the last major pillar of the landmark civil rights law.
Even if the court deals a broader blow to the Voting Rights Act, most of those districts are unlikely to be redrawn before the 2026 midterm elections, and the number that could ultimately swing to the GOP is likely to be smaller.
However, with the House decided by a razor-thin margin in the last election — the GOP currently controls the chamber by three votes — every seat counts.
“It makes it harder for Democrats to create a majority if they’re just removing Democratic districts,” said Jonathan Serfas, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who has helped draw maps ordered by justices in several Voting Rights Act cases. But he cautioned against predicting the size of Republican gains in the future.
“None of us can know that,” Serfas said, adding that there would still be limits on GOP benefits. “We’re talking about real ceilings here.”
This is because, Even if Section 2 went too farThe Democratic-leaning voters to whom it gave a vote will not. Republican mapmakers will have to put it somewhere, and it will likely remain in Democratic areas.
Take Tennessee, where the Republican-controlled Legislature drew A Mercilessly partisan Map during the last redistricting cycle. That map yielded seven Republican seats and one Democratic seat, a district compliant with the Memphis Voting Rights Act.
Even without the Voting Rights Act, there is no way for Republicans to turn the Memphis seat red, Serfas said. If they distribute the city’s voters among neighboring heavily Republican districts, they could make those districts more competitive.
He said some other GOP-controlled states, such as Missouri and South Carolina, are in a similar predicament with their only heavily Democratic seats chosen to comply with voting law. Other states, like Georgia, are so politically competitive that Republicans likely wouldn’t be able to erase a Democratic seat in one part of the state without jeopardizing their own.
Still other GOP-controlled states, such as Mississippi, may find it more difficult to shake off its lone Democratic seat provided by the Voting Rights Act. In larger states like North Carolina and Florida, Republicans will have more freedom to redraw maps to their party’s advantage without having to preserve majority and minority seats held by Democrats.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus gathered after Supreme Court arguments on Wednesday and warned that the broad ruling against Section 2, which allows challenges to racially discriminatory election practices, could lead to severe gerrymandering by Republicans. That could leave many black voters without meaningful representation in Congress, they said.
“If we remove the elements that create the opportunity for it to look like its own people, it will not be as democratic as we hoped it would be,” said Rep. Troy Carter, a Louisiana Democrat who represents most of New Orleans. “It will be much weaker, and ultimately on the path to oligarchy rather than democracy.”
Republicans are already engaged in a tense national battle Redistricting campaign in the middle of the decade Because President Donald Trump wants them to maximize the number of winnable seats to avoid losing control of the House in 2026. The incumbent president’s party usually loses seats in midterm elections.
Many Republican states are unlikely to be able to take advantage of the relaxed Voting Rights Act standards in time to help Trump. It’s not clear when the court will issue its decision, but it is certain that it will come by early summer 2026. That could come after congressional election filing deadlines in almost all states.
While some Republican-controlled states could attempt extraordinary measures to take advantage of favorable governance, most changes will likely be incorporated into the maps for 2028 and beyond.
However, Democrats are on edge.
“If they repeal Section 2, I think that would give us license to see more stringent redistricting, which is what they’re preventing across the country,” said Rep. Sheila Chervilus McCormick, a Florida Democrat who represents a majority-minority district in South Florida.
“The Voting Rights Act is the most important civil rights legislation ever enacted, and it remains relevant in an environment where there are people across this country who want to undermine our free and fair elections, especially as it relates to communities of color,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the first person of color to lead a major party in Congress, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Kareem Crayton of the Brennan Center for Justice said the main impact of any changes will be felt outside the halls of Congress. Three-quarters of all Section 2 cases involve state or local government offices, he said.
“The things under Congress are closest to the people, the city councils, the county commissions, the school boards, and all of those were the direct recipients of the work of the plaintiffs who sued to get representation that would allow people to actually engage in what we call traditional politics,” he said.
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Riccardi reported from Denver.