The Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais represents a tectonic shift in civil rights and election law. The Court rewrote — and eviscerated — key protections of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that goals such as partisan gerrymandering and incumbent protection can justify drawing election maps that dampen minority voters’ political power. As has been the case with many recent Supreme Court decisions limiting federal civil rights protections, one of the by-products of Callais will be to embroil state courts in a new wave of legal and political battles.
Until Callais, the Voting Rights Act’s antidiscrimination protections partly served as a constraint on states seeking untrammeled partisan advantage in drawing election maps. No longer. Even though the midterm election cycle is already well underway, several GOP-controlled southern states — including Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee — have responded swiftly to the decision with efforts to draw more extreme gerrymanders. More such efforts are likely after the midterms at both the state and local levels, including responsive efforts to pass gerrymanders favoring Democrats.
Moving forward, any legal constraints on these attempts to draw new maps will come from state law (barring any new action by Congress). These could include state constitutional limits on partisan gerrymandering, along with other state requirements such as mandates that districts preserve communities of interest. State law will also govern map-drawing processes, including whether states use independent redistricting commissions, as well as when and how mid-decade redistricting is permitted.
