Voting rights ruling puts Black caucus on edge as districts could be redrawn

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Black members of Congress said a U.S. Supreme Court decision that gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act would set up a major shake-up for their ranks, as Republican-led states move to redraw U.S. House districts without considering race. The decision, handed down Wednesday, cleared the way for states to redraw districts under an approach that, critics say, could dilute the ability of minority communities to elect representatives of their choosing.

Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the caucus and Democratic members would respond by challenging the effects of the ruling. Clarke warned that “The Supreme Court has opened the door to a coordinated attack on Black voters across the country,” calling it “an outright power grab.”

Clarke’s remarks came as she was joined by more than a dozen of the Congressional Black Caucus’s roughly 60 members, including Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Their reactions to the decision ranged from outrage and defiance to mourning, according to the report.

Troy Carter, one of two Black Democrats from Louisiana, said the ruling was “a devastating blow to our democracy, plain and simple.” Louisiana was at the center of the case that led to Wednesday’s decision, which reshaped how federal standards apply to certain claims challenging electoral maps under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

While it was unclear immediately how many House seats could ultimately be affected, redistricting experts cited by the report predicted that more than a dozen seats now held by minorities could be swept away in the next round of congressional mapmaking. Republican leaders in several Southern states already were discussing how they plan to apply the ruling, and the report said Florida approved a new U.S. House map soon after Wednesday’s decision, including changes that redrew a district created to elect a Black representative.

Kristen Clarke, general counsel for the NAACP and the first Black woman to be assistant attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice’s civil rights division, said she expected states with histories of slavery to move quickly. “I would be surprised if we do not see former slave-holding states moving at lightning speed to target districts that provide Black voters and other voters of color an equal opportunity to elect candidates,” she said, adding that it was not clear whether state-level voting laws or constitutional protections against racial discrimination would provide meaningful safeguards.

Black conservatives and Republican officials, however, praised the decision as a victory against what they described as race-based mandates. Linda Lee Tarver, of the Project 21 Black Leadership Network, said in a statement that civil rights laws were not intended “to institutionalize racial line-drawing as a default feature of our political system.”

The Congressional Black Caucus has been tied to Voting Rights Act-era redistricting since its formation in 1971. The report said it was established after court-ordered redistricting sent more minorities to Congress following the act’s passage six years earlier, when the number of Black representatives increased from nine to 13.

The caucus also gained a public profile early on, including a boycott of President Richard Nixon’s State of the Union address after Nixon refused to meet with the group. The report said the caucus later developed a list of recommendations, and earned the nickname “conscience of the Congress,” a phrase that Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia invoked when he said the ruling could shrink the caucus “in a hugely significant way.”

Lawmakers said their priorities would include litigation and voter mobilization. Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist who advises the Black Caucus, said the group expects to be involved in multiple legal fights for members whose districts could be targeted after the Supreme Court ruling, and he said the decision makes voter turnout efforts even more important.

Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama, whose state was at the center of a Voting Rights Act case decided in favor of Black representation nearly three years ago, said the party now needs to focus on motivating voters ahead of this year’s midterm elections. “Now more than ever, we need communities across this nation to mobilize — in state legislatures, in the courts and at the ballot box,” Sewell said. “We need to vote like we’ve never voted before.”