Democrats Have One Brutal Path to Survival if the Supreme Court Kills the Voting Rights Act

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The Supreme Court’s evident commitment to eviscerating what remains of the Voting Rights Act appears certain to hand an electoral bonanza to Republicans. If the Republican-appointed justices end federal protections for minority representation, as they sounded eager to do during Wednesday’s arguments in Callais v. Louisiana, Southern states can quickly gerrymander Black and brown communities into oblivion. The resulting maps will hand white voters almost total control over these states’ congressional maps, producing a net gain of 15^[2] to 19 GOP seats^[3] in the House of Representatives. As the New York Times’ Nate Cohn explains^[4], the VRA’s demise could put the House out of reach for Democrats outside of a rare “blue wave” election.

Republicans’ near-permanent House majority, however, is not inevitable—even if SCOTUS does deliver a death blow to minority voting rights. That’s because the court’s decision would also allow blue states to draw more efficient Democratic gerrymanders, redrawing current majority-minority districts to maximize the party’s electoral advantage. Freed from the VRA’s constraints, states like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois could move more Democratic voters out of deep-blue districts into red and purple districts, eliminating more than a dozen Republican seats in the House.

Such a strategy would require painful trade-offs: Congress could become even less diverse, since racial minorities in blue states would have fewer opportunities to elect the representatives of their choice. And the number of truly competitive House elections would shrink even more, further eroding democratic accountability. The net effect, though, would be a substantial boost for the Democratic Party that could offset many of the gains that Republicans are poised to reap. The result may not be a Republican-dominated House so much as a Congress with far fewer members of color—an outcome that the justices bent on destroying the Voting Rights Act blithely dismissed on Wednesday.

In truth, a broad ruling in Callais could leave blue states with no other option than to redraw their majority-minority districts. The Republican-appointed justices seem eager to rule^[5] that the Constitution bars states (and courts) from using race as a factor when drawing congressional maps. This holding would effectively gut Section 2 of the VRA, which guarantees fair representation to racial minorities.

The impact of this decision would be devastating for Democrats in the South: Many left-leaning congressional districts in this region were drawn solely to comply with the VRA; once the law is dismantled, red states could eliminate these districts to create more safe GOP seats. Gov. Ron DeSantis, for instance, has already suggested^[6] that Florida will undertake “mid-decade redistricting” if the Supreme Court kneecaps the VRA and speculated that several other states will too. The new maps would ruthlessly dilute the votes of racial minorities to give white Republican voters control over more seats.

But there is a flip side: Red states aren’t the only ones with majority-minority districts; blue states have long drawn them as well, out of good-faith compliance with the VRA. Democratic legislatures typically create these districts to ensure that racial minorities have a fair shot at electing candidates of their choice. That approach prevents lawmakers from drawing more “efficient” gerrymanders—that is, maps that distribute voters in ways that maximally increase Democrats’ electoral advantage. For decades, the Democratic Party has accepted this trade-off: stronger representation for racial minorities, and a more diverse congressional delegation, at the cost of fewer House seats overall.

Without an operative VRA, though, blue states would have no obligation to maintain these majority-minority districts. In fact, they might have to redraw them: If Callais comes out as expected, these districts may now constitute an unlawful racial gerrymander, and voters could sue to invalidate them in court. Either way, by choice or by necessity, Democratic legislatures could then “unpack” their majority-minority districts. That means re-sorting racial minorities into whiter districts to more efficiently convert Democratic votes into House seats. The resulting maps would largely deny these populations the opportunity to elect their preferred representatives, since they would lack a majority in most (if not all) districts. This could seriously diminish minority representation in Congress. But these maps would also more effectively dilute Republican votes, ensuring that Democrats win more seats on balance.

Consider New York. The state’s 26 House seats are currently split between 19 Democrats and seven Republicans. That includes many majority-minority districts in and around New York City. (Depending on how they’re defined, New York has about 10^[7] such districts.) Currently, to comply with the VRA, the legislature has grouped many minority neighborhoods—so-called communities of interest—in districts together. But since nonwhite voters are disproportionately Democratic, that produces “wasted votes^[8]”: ballots cast in excess of what the Democrat needs to win. If the legislature “unpacked” these districts by dispersing minorities into areas now dominated by white Republicans, it could enact a map^[9] that gives Democrats 24 House seats and Republicans just two. That’s a five-seat pickup for Democrats.

Similar opportunities await the party in New Jersey, whose House delegation is split between nine Democrats and three Republicans. The state has about five majority-minority districts. If nonwhite voters were redistributed more “efficiently,” Democrats could likely pick up one or two more seats. Illinois currently sends 14 Democrats and three Republicans to the House, but as data scientist Zachary Donnini has shown^[11], unpacking the state’s five majority-minority districts could wipe out its three GOP representatives. Democrats would then hold all 17 seats. In Maryland and Nevada, redrawing multiple VRA-compliant districts could knock off each state’s lone GOP congressman.

Together, these gerrymanders could give Democrats 12 more seats in the House. That doesn’t even include California, which is on the brink of handing Democrats five more seats^[12] through a ballot measure called Proposition 50. California Democrats devised this new map to counteract^[13] Texas Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting ambush, but it still sacrifices electoral efficiency to preserve VRA-compliant districts. After Callais, California could enact an even more aggressive gerrymander that awards Democrats several more seats.

There are, of course, obstacles to all of these plans. Right now, New York and New Jersey give primary redistricting authority to bipartisan commissions that (in theory) may not favor one party over another. But California does the same, and Gov. Gavin Newsom is attempting to find a way around it. There is plenty of time for both New York^[14] and New Jersey^[15] to alter their constitutions in time for the 2028 elections, when Callais’ full force will likely be felt. Nevada’s Republican governor would likely reject any new gerrymander, so voters would need to oust him in 2026 or give the Legislature a Democratic supermajority that could override his veto. In short, the barriers to a new gerrymander after Callais aren’t insurmountable in any of these states. Democrats just need to be as resolute and strategic as Republicans have been in their decadeslong assault on the Voting Rights Act.

There is, alas, no way around two unfortunate consequences of this plan: The number of competitive elections will dwindle, and nonwhite representation will almost certainly fall. Majority-minority districts have long driven diversity^[20] in the House, as the VRA intended, and their decline would likely deny Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans the federal representation they deserve. And blue states’ efforts to preserve these seats have, in turn, produced more evenly divided districts elsewhere, giving voters a meaningful choice at a time when competitive races are vanishing^[21].

It will not be blue states’ fault, though, when the Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act. The question will be how best to respond to the judicial destruction of a landmark civil rights statute that did more to advance multiracial democracy than any other law in history. They can strive to uphold its spirit by fighting a losing battle for minority representation. Or they can exploit its wreckage to build a new map of power.

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