Gerrymander scramble

When Tennessee’s Republican-led legislature approved a new congressional map during a special session in early May, splitting up the state’s only majority black ­district in Memphis, raucous protesters held signs referencing “Jim Crow” with slogans such as “Black Votes Matter.”

But the state’s rush to approve the new map, signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee on May 7, had more to do with political opportunity—namely, eliminating Tennessee’s only remaining Democratic U.S. House seat. The move was part of a broader GOP strategy launched at President Donald Trump’s urging to retain the party’s slim majority in the House in the upcoming midterm elections.

Tennessee led the charge by becoming the first state to pass a new congressional map after a blockbuster Supreme Court decision in late April that weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In Louisiana v. Callais, the high court’s majority struck down Louisiana’s congressional map for what the justices described as unconstitutional gerrymandering that improperly considered race to create a majority-black district.

By narrowing the interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, once a tool used to challenge maps that diluted minority voting power, the Supreme Court supercharged a partisan-driven redistricting tug-of-war unfolding across the country.

The day after the Callais ruling, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry delayed the state’s U.S. House primaries as lawmakers worked to draw and approve new districts. Republicans in Alabama also moved forward with a proposed new congressional map. On May 4, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a new map that could help Republicans pick up four more seats in the U.S. House—but the move swiftly drew lawsuits.

Some estimates suggest the GOP could flip as many as 10 Democratic seats in the House. But in the flurry of partisan gerrymandering, some fear the long-term consequences are being overlooked.

“We already have a hyper-polarized electorate under the old lines,” said Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “What we’re moving to with partisan gerrymandering with legal limits is making House elections a farce.” By shrinking the number of marginal districts, those where elections are close and competitive, “it doesn’t matter how you vote … whoever is able to draw the districts determines who’s going to win,” he added.

Two other recent Supreme Court decisions paved the way for partisan gerrymandering. Earlier this year, the court upheld new congressional maps in both Texas and California, allowing for gerrymandering based on party politics as opposed to race. Separately, in the 2019 Rucho case, the Supreme Court determined federal courts could not consider partisan gerrymandering claims.

Now, ahead of the 2028 elections, “you’re going to see more redistricting and more litigation under state constitutions,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. “You can’t litigate on racial gerrymanders. You can’t litigate partisan gerrymanders—so what else is there?”

Statewide battles over partisan gerrymandering are already in full swing. On May 8, Republicans gained a decisive victory when the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan on procedural grounds. The new map could have added as many as four additional Democratic U.S. House seats. Democrats have appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Earlier this year, the Utah Supreme Court left in place a new congressional map that favored Democrats. As of May 11, legal actions were underway in Tennessee, Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama that could undo or block some potential midterm gains for Republicans.

Democratic leaders indicated their counteroffensive is only getting started. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, told The New York Times the party is limited this election cycle due to constitutional constraints in Democratic-held states. But by 2028, “we will have several of those constraints removed,” he said. In a May 4 post on X, Jeffries and Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, warned, “Across the nation, we will sue, we will redraw, and we will win.”

Olsen of the EPPC predicted blue states such as New Jersey, Maryland, and Colorado likely will use the GOP handbook to eliminate Republican seats. By 2032, he warned, the long-term partisan effect of the Callais decision could easily benefit Democrats.

“The very thing that frees up Republicans in the South to undo Democratic seats would free up Democrats in the North and in the West and the Midwest to do the same to Republican seats,” Olsen said.

President Trump set off the rare, mid-decade gerrymandering war in 2025 when he convinced Texas lawmakers to craft a new congressional map to aid Republicans facing a midterm uphill battle. Historically, the party in power almost always loses seats in midterm elections. And congressional maps are usually only drawn once a decade following the census to account for population shifts. Trump’s unique strategy met immediate backlash: California fired back with its own new map that favored Democrats, ushering in a battle between red and blue states.

Redistricting has become a GOP litmus test. Already, several Indiana Republican lawmakers who balked at a Trump-backed redraw of the state’s congressional map lost their primary races.

The Callais decision further heightened the pressure. The case involved the Louisiana state legislature’s decision to adopt a new redistricting map that deliberately created a “majority-minority” district, one where blacks were the majority, in an attempt to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. By creating a majority black district, where voters tended to side with Democrats, map-­makers sought to ensure other districts remained under tight GOP control.

The Supreme Court majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, suggested nearly all purposefully created majority-minority districts are unconstitutional. Those who wished to challenge a map on such grounds must now prove it was intentionally drawn to disadvantage a given racial group.

The ruling fixed anomalies that emerged with lawmakers using the Voting Rights Act to draw districts on the basis of race. States sought to comply with the act but also stay within constitutional prohibitions on taking race into account when making laws. Lael Weinberger, a lawyer and assistant professor of law at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, said some sort of reset was inevitable.

Mark Caleb Smith, professor of political science at Cedarville University, thinks the ruling was constitutionally justifiable. But he’s worried about the broader implications of the new era of partisan gerrymandering. “We need to be way more concerned about the long-term health and vitality of our republic, as opposed to the next election,” he said. “Having massive pockets of people who feel underrepresented, who probably are underrepresented, is going to create more turmoil.”