The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais last week gutted a core provision of the Voting Rights Act, opening a new chapter in the nation’s redistricting wars and triggering a cascade of state-level maneuvers that both parties say will escalate into winner-take-all combat. The decision weakened the requirement that, in places where white and minority voters cast ballots along racial lines, states must draw districts giving minorities a chance to elect representatives they prefer — a protection many described as the last remaining national guardrail against partisan gerrymandering.
Within days of the ruling, Republican-dominated legislatures began moving to redraw congressional maps. In Tennessee, lawmakers plan to dismantle the state’s only Democratic-held district, a majority-Black seat centered in Memphis, by splitting it among more conservative suburban and rural communities. Louisiana postponed its May 16 congressional primaries to give itself time to redraw two majority-Black Democratic seats that the previous legal framework had required the state to maintain. Alabama has asked the Supreme Court for permission to similarly redraw its two majority-Black districts.
“I’ve never subscribed to the idea we’re in a civil war, but the gerrymandering wars and the recent decision from the Supreme Court do not make the United States more united,” said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University. “It speeds up the hyperpartisan force and atmosphere that people feel on both sides.”
The conflict was ignited last year when former President Donald Trump broke with tradition by urging Republicans to redraw maps mid-decade, rather than waiting for the next census. Trump pressed the point again on social media Sunday, writing, “We should demand that State Legislatures do what the Supreme Court says must be done.” He said Republicans could gain 20 House seats through redistricting.
Democrats responded with threats of their own. Party leaders in New York and Illinois signaled they would retaliate by carving up conservative strongholds and dispersing Republican voters across more liberal, urban districts. Rick Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, said, “It’s hard to know where it ends.” Analysts predicted that the cycle of revenge-redistricting would become a permanent fixture of American politics, with each party attempting to lock in its advantage whenever it held state power.
“There is no more rule of law in redistricting,” said Jonathan Cervas, a political scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who has drawn court-ordered maps. “There have to be some constraints, somewhere. Otherwise we don’t really have elections.”
The 2019 Supreme Court ruling that federal courts cannot stop partisan gerrymandering had already cleared the way for aggressive map-drawing. But the Voting Rights Act’s protections remained a check, particularly in the South, where racial polarization in voting is most pronounced. By weakening those protections, the Callais decision removed what many described as the final barrier.
Willie Simon, chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party in Tennessee, stood outside the Memphis motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and said the ruling sent a message to Black voters and other minority groups. “They can just erase us,” Simon said.
Legal and political observers noted that gerrymandering has been a feature of American politics since the founding, but the current iteration is unique: both parties are now willing to exploit every available opening, and the courts have stepped back from policing the outcome. Michael Li of the liberal Brennan Center for Justice in New York cautioned that extreme gerrymanders carry risk. “When you try to get every last ounce of blood from the stone you can end up shooting yourself in the foot,” Li said, pointing to the 2018 “blue wave” that overcame Republican-drawn maps and returned Democrats to the House majority.
Still, the prevailing view among experts was that the decision would accelerate political dysfunction. Sean Trende, a political analyst who has drawn maps for Republicans, said the coming storm would be more a symptom than a cause of polarization. “All our institutions are broken. We don’t speak a common political language,” Trende said. “This is what you get.”