The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday sharply limited the ability of states to consider race when drawing congressional maps, a decision that could reshape the balance of power in Washington and intensify redistricting battles ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, which included two majority-black districts, as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
In the court’s 36-page opinion, Alito emphasized that “the Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race,” framing the central question as whether compliance with the Voting Rights Act justifies such actions.
For the court’s conservative wing, the answer was no.
“Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” the court’s opinion held.
The ruling stopped short of overturning Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but it significantly restricts how states can use race in redistricting, a shift that could weaken a key mechanism for creating majority-minority districts.
“Today’s 6-3 Supreme Court decision in the Callais case is BIG WIN for Equal Protection under the Law, as it returns the Voting Rights Act to its Original Intent, which was to protect against intentional Racial Discrimination,” President Trump celebrated in a Truth Social post. “Thank you to the brilliant Justice Samuel Alito for authoring this important and appropriate Opinion.”
In a bitter dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan warned of sweeping consequences that “are likely to be far-reaching and grave.”
“Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter,” Kagan wrote. “In the States where that law continues to matter—the States still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting—minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process.”
Louisiana will be required to redraw its maps, and other Republican-led states will likely revisit their own districts amid an escalating nationwide redistricting battle.
Ryan Girdusky, a conservative political consultant and host of the podcast “It’s A Numbers Game,” said he expects the White House to pressure Republican-led states to act ahead of the November elections.
“I think the White House was genuinely caught off guard with how ambitious blue states would be, like California and Virginia, to redistrict their states in retaliation to Missouri and Texas,” Girdusky told The Daily Wire. “And because they are on the losing side of this calculation, as of right now, of this redistricting calculation, and because Indiana failed to redistrict, there’s going to be immense pressure on all southern states to redistrict black, majority, mostly rural districts, into Republican districts.”
New maps in Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee could net Republicans as many as 12 seats in Congress, according to a New York Times analysis.
Blue states, including California and Virginia, have passed referendums expected to add Democratic seats. The Virginia Supreme Court is currently considering Republican-backed legal challenges.
“If Virginia cannot redistrict, if Virginia has to go back to its old district lines, and we have a situation where they go back to their old lines, and the South is able to redistrict, it absolutely could be game-changing as far as the midterms go,” Girdusky added.
Democrats sharply criticized the ruling. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin called Wednesday’s ruling a “dark day for America,” arguing the court “effectively killed Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a major step back in the fight for racial justice and fair representation.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) described the decision as a “sledgehammer to one of the most important civil rights laws in American history.”
For Justice Clarence Thomas, who grew up in the segregated South, the court’s ruling didn’t go far enough.
“As I explained more than 30 years ago, I would go further and hold that §2 of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate districting at all,” Thomas wrote, calling the court’s prior approach a “disastrous misadventure.”
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