Supreme Court Limits VRA Section 2, Triggering GOP Redistricting Scramble Across the South

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — the last major structural protection for minority voting power after Shelby County v. Holder (2013) gutted preclearance — has now been judicially eviscerated. The Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais rewrote the Gingles standard so that plaintiffs challenging a map as racially discriminatory must now prove intentional discrimination if partisanship is asserted as an alternative motive. Because race and partisanship are so deeply correlated in the South, that bar will almost never be cleared. As one election-law expert put it, the old Gingles standard now effectively stands 'in name only.' Louisiana suspended its May 16 congressional primary within 24 hours of the ruling so the legislature could redraw maps. On May 1, 2026, Governor Kay Ivey called Alabama's legislature into special session — not to draw new maps directly, but to authorize special primary elections contingent on the Supreme Court lifting the existing federal injunction against Alabama's Republican-drawn districts; if that injunction falls, Alabama would revert to its 2023 legislature-drawn map, which federal courts had already found likely violated the VRA. Tennessee's General Assembly convened for a special session beginning May 5 at Governor Bill Lee's call, targeting the majority-Black Memphis-based 9th Congressional District held by Representative Steve Cohen.

The structural stakes are direct and traceable. Alabama's current court-ordered map — producing two Black representatives for the first time in the state's history — exists only because of years of VRA Section 2 litigation culminating in the 5-4 ruling in Allen v. Milligan (2023). Alabama is now arguing that Callais overrides Allen and that the injunction protecting those gains must fall. In Tennessee, the explicit target is the sole Democratic-held district, centered on majority-Black Memphis. As for the nationwide seat math: a CBS News analysis found that, in a best-case scenario for Republicans, southern states could collectively add between one and nine more GOP-friendly districts for the 2026 midterms, with that number expected to grow for 2028. The New York Times separately estimated that weakening the VRA could shift up to 12 seats from Democratic to Republican control. Cook Political Report and Sabato's Crystal Ball put the figure at seven districts; NPR counted 15; and Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter calculated that 27 seats could shift Republican over time. The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which filed amicus briefs in Callais defending Section 2, has warned that the ruling constitutes a devastating usurpation of congressional enforcement power under the 14th Amendment. Sherrilyn Ifill's analysis noted that the Court's August 2025 order asking for briefing on Section 2's constitutionality itself telegraphed this endgame — 13 years after Shelby County hollowed out Section 5, the Court has now crippled Section 2 as well.

The Civil Rights Division is not a backstop. In January 2025, the court in the Texas redistricting case ordered DOJ attorneys to state whether they intended to continue challenging maps that DOJ's own attorneys had found reflected intentional discrimination in every Texas redistricting cycle since 1970. The attorneys asked for more time, then in March 2025 dropped all of their claims. Voting rights groups are still litigating those Texas maps on their own, with trial having begun May 21, 2025. Combined with the Supreme Court's 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause — which held that partisan gerrymandering is unreviewable by federal courts — Callais now gives states a ready-made defense: assert partisanship, and racial dilution is effectively unreviewable under either doctrinal framework. As the Lawyers' Committee observed, protection of voting rights 'will now fall even more heavily on private plaintiffs, including the voter engagement groups and legal nonprofits that have consistently enforced Congress's anti-discrimination mandates.'

The path forward requires urgency at every level. Congress must pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore a results-based Section 2 standard and re-establish preclearance — restoring what the 1982 Congress deliberately enacted and what Callais has now stripped. State legislatures in blue and purple states must enact state Voting Rights Acts independent of federal judicial interpretation; the Lawyers' Committee and allied organizations have already laid out the legal framework for such protections. State attorneys general must file affirmative litigation under state constitutional equal-protection provisions. And the Civil Rights Division — sidelined from VRA enforcement by both judicial gutting and executive abandonment — must be fully re-staffed and re-mandated the moment political conditions allow.