The Supreme Court has effectively neutered the Voting Rights Act, as the six conservative justices ruled states can gerrymander legislative districts to maximize partisan advantage as long as they don’t express the intention of removing Black or Brown elected officials. The conservatives demand proof of intentional discrimination against minority voters rather than just discriminatory outcomes. That enables a multitude of sins.
The April 29 decision in the case of Louisiana vs. Callais makes it easier for states to dismantle “majority-minority” districts, which were previously protected to ensure minority communities could elect their preferred candidates.
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to make it illegal for segregationists, mainly in the South, to use threats of violence and bureaucratic hurdles to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Black voters to cast ballots. Nowadays, Republicans have jeered that most of those segregationists were Democrats, but in the past 61 years, most of of those Southern Democrats have become Republicans and they now form the backbone of Donald Trump’s support.
Chief Justice John Roberts has spent much of his legal career dedicated to overturning the Voting Rights Act. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1979, he clerked for Judge Henry Friendly of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and in 1980 for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist before Roberts was named a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith in 1981, in the new administration of Ronald Reagan. Roberts concentrated on the scope of the Voting Rights Act, especially Sections 2 and 5, which Roberts and other Reagan aides believed intruded on states’ regulations. He became associate White House counsel in 1982, entered private appellate practice in 1986 and returned to the White House in 1989 as deputy solicitor general under Ken Starr in George H.W. Bush’s administration. In appearances before the Supreme Court Roberts argued against policies that afforded special benefits to minority groups.
Roberts finally got his shot at the big time in 2003, when President George W. Bush named Roberts to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and he was promoted to the Supreme Court in 2005 after the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist. In 2013 Chief Justice Roberts voted with the majority in Shelby vs. Holder to strike down requirements that states and localities with a history of racially motivated voter suppression obtain federal preclearance before enacting changes to their voting laws.
In 2023 Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh joined the liberal justices in Allen v. Milligan, a 5-4 decision holding that Alabama’s congressional redistricting plan violated Section 2 of the VRA. Writing for the majority, Roberts ruled that Alabama must draw an additional majority-minority district. Writing for himself and the three liberal justices, Roberts also wrote that “[t]he contention that mapmakers must be entirely ‘blind’ to race has no footing in our §2 case law.”
But after Trump returned to the White House in 2025, he once again upset the world economy with arbitrary tariffs, paid by U.S. consumers. Stock markets were unsettled until the Supreme Court told Trump the tariffs were illegal. So Trump joined with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran, resulting in a spike in gas prices. many American voters realized they had been taken in by the grifter. Democrats started overperforming by more than 10 points to win special elections in unexpected places. As Trump became concerned he might lose control of Congress, he ordered Texas Republican leaders to gerrymander five additional Republican districts.
That set off a gerrymandering war, as Gov. Gavin Newsom called on the California Assembly to suspend the state’s independent redistricting commission and create five more Democratic districts in California. Republicans called foul, and persisted after Virginia Democrats approved a map that created four more Democratic districts (which a Republican-dominated state Supreme Court overruled). So Florida Republicans passed a map to eliminate four Democratic seats.
Roberts returned to form with the Callais ruling, which found it was illegal for lawmakers to create a second majority-Black Congressional District in Louisiana. The ruling, written by Justice Sam Alito, immediately impacts the mid-term congressional elections in November, with states in the South postponing primary elections, even in states where voting had begun, to allow the states to redraw maps to reduce the number of competitive seats with Democratic majorities and potentially boosting Republican seats. As of May 11, Democrats have gained six Democratic seats and Republicans have gained 14 seats, for a net gain of eight Republican seats.
The Supreme Court ruling may allow seven Republican-dominated Southern states to gerrymander Congressional districts with Black majorities into Republican-majority districts, but Democrats may gain support from independent voters and moderate Republicans who are upset with Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran, which has spiked the cost of fuel. Democrats still are likely to flip enough seats to regain the House majority in the midterm election in November.
In the Senate, where Republicans now hold a 53-47 majority, Democrats have a chance to flip at least four votes to regain control, with opportunities in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas and high hopes of hanging onto Senate seats in Georgia, where Sen. John Ossoff (D) is seeking re-election after a 1-point runoff win in 2021, and Michigan, where Gary Peters (D) is retiring in a state that leans Democratic.
The longest odds for a Democratic flip are in Texas, where state Rep. James Talarico, a former public schoolteacher, now Presbyterian seminarian who can talk about economic fairness and the liberal side of the Bible, narrowly leads Republicans Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton, who are in a nasty runoff that will be decided May 26.
Democrats also hope Iowa is turning around from the state Trump won by over 13 percentage points in 2024. With Republican Sen. Jodi Ernst stepping down, two Democrats, state Rep. Josh Turek and state Sen. Zack Wahls, are running in the June 2 primary to face the likely Republican nominee, U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson. Both Democrats narrowly led Hinson in an April poll by Echelon Insights.
With Trump’s war of choice in the Middle East causing fuel prices to spike and groceries ever higher, this isn’t shaping up to be a normal election year. Democrats need to settle feuds and close ranks to regain control of Congress and make Trump’s last two years in the White House as miserable for the “GOP’ as Trump and his Republican enablers fear. — JMC
