Republican legislators across the South are moving to capitalize on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act, launching special sessions this week to redraw congressional district lines in ways that would eliminate or reconfigure majority-Black seats. The legislative maneuvering, unfolding in Alabama, Tennessee, and Louisiana, follows the high court’s ruling last week that struck down a Louisiana district for impermissibly relying on race, upending a settled understanding of the landmark civil rights law and giving state lawmakers a fast track to approve new maps before November’s midterm elections.
Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature convened a special session on Monday at the call of Gov. Kay Ivey. Lawmakers are weighing a contingency plan that would allow them to replace a court-drawn map — which created a second district with a substantial number of Black voters — with a 2023 plan drawn by the state’s GOP majority. That earlier map would drastically alter the district now held by Rep. Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat. A federal court had previously ordered Alabama to use the more racially equitable map until after the 2030 Census, but state officials have asked the Supreme Court, in light of its Louisiana ruling, to let them revert.
In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee announced a special session beginning Tuesday, after a pressure campaign from former President Donald Trump and other leading Republicans, to break up the state’s sole Democratic-held House district, anchored in majority-Black Memphis. “We owe it to Tennesseans to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters,” Lee said in a statement. Until last week, Voting Rights Act precedent had prevented Republicans from dissipating the district’s Democratic voters into surrounding conservative districts. That constraint may no longer apply.
Louisiana, already in regular session, moved rapidly after the Supreme Court’s ruling to delay its May 16 congressional primary in order to give lawmakers time to draft new boundaries, though Republicans had not yet released their proposals as of Monday. The state’s rush prompted a cascade of lawsuits from Democrats and civil rights organizations seeking to keep the original primary schedule and allow early votes that have already been cast to count.
The broadening national redistricting fight has drawn in other states as well. On Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he had signed a new congressional map passed by Republican lawmakers that analysts say could help the party flip as many as four additional House seats. The map was immediately challenged in state court as a partisan gerrymander that violates a Florida constitutional provision barring districts drawn to favor one party.
Trump, in a Sunday social media post, encouraged more states to join the effort, claiming Republicans could gain 20 House seats through aggressive redistricting. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster’s office, however, said the Republican would not call a special session to redraw the state’s single Democratic-held district.
Civil rights activists responded to the legislative push with rallies, marches, and new court filings. Several hundred protesters gathered outside the Alabama Statehouse on Monday — across the street from where Martin Luther King Jr. addressed thousands after the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march — carrying signs reading “No new map” and “We fight back! Black Voters Matter.”
Sheyann Webb-Christburg, who as a child participated in the 1965 Bloody Sunday march, told the crowd in Montgomery: “Much blood, sweat and tears was shed in an effort for us to gain the right to vote. In 2026, there are still people who are still not exercising that right to vote, and we are still fighting today, even in an effort to keep our right to vote.”
In Memphis, clergy members gathered Monday to denounce the move to split the city’s congressional district. “This latest attempt at redistricting is not just about lines on a map, it is about misrepresentation,” said the Rev. Earle Fisher, pastor of Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church and founder of Up the Vote 901. “It’s about whether the voices of Black people in this state will be heard or hidden.”
Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, called last week’s Supreme Court decision the trigger for “a wave of nefarious actions” across states that threatens to disenfranchise Black voters.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries highlighted a redistricting effort in New York that could ultimately benefit his party, but the state would need to pass a constitutional amendment twice and win voter approval, a process that won’t produce a new map until 2028 at the earliest.
Republicans believe the combination of mid-decade maps in five states could net the party as many as 13 new seats, while Democrats project gains of up to 10 seats from new districts in three states. The newly proposed southern maps would add to the GOP’s expected tally. All told, at least eight states have enacted new House districts since the last round of post-census redistricting, a level of fluidity not seen since the 1960s, when the Supreme Court first enforced the “one person, one vote” principle.