Community members arrive at their local polls to vote in November 2022 in Atlanta. While national attention has focused on Congress over the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s recent decision gutting a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, the recent ruling also applies to state legislative districts and county and municipal election maps. (Photo: Megan Varner/Getty Images)
A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision gutting a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act opens the door for state officials to radically overhaul not only Congress, but also state legislatures, county commissions, city councils and even local school boards.
Last week’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais dismantled some of the last barriers protecting the voting power of Black, Latino and other racial minority voters enshrined in the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 federal civil rights law that prohibits racial discrimination in voting access.
The 6-3 decision all but invalidates a provision called Section 2, which required states to draw electoral maps to give racial minority voters the opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
And while national attention has focused on the U.S. House of Representatives as the 2026 congressional elections approach, the recent ruling also applies to state legislative districts and county and municipal election maps.
These local changes just float down the road.
“While everyone has been focused on what this means for power in Congress, it changes a whole different sector of power,” said Davante Lewis, an elected member of the Louisiana Public Service Commission and one of the parties in the case that forced Louisiana to create congressional maps that were ultimately invalidated by the Callais ruling.
“It’s a decision about who will be on the school board, who will be on the city council and who will be represented in the judiciary,” Lewis said.
Electoral maps are typically redrawn every 10 years after the census, but the Trump administration encouraged Republican-led states to redraw districts to favor the GOP, a controversial move that prompted some Democratic-led states to retaliate with their own gerrymandering.
“But I think after 2030 we will definitely see the impact of the Callais decision at the state level,” said Travis Crum, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, whose research focuses on voting rights, race and federalism.
Effects in the South
Critics of the ruling say it will fundamentally weaken the voting power and power of Black and other minority citizens up and down the ballot, particularly in the South. There, many of the seats held by black elected officials are in so-called opportunity districts, which were created after the passage of the Voting Rights Act to allow black and other minority voters to choose their preferred candidates.
“At the congressional level, we’re in a race to the bottom on redistricting, but when it comes to the legislative level at the state level, we’ll have to wait and see,” Crum said.
In 10 state legislatures in the South Republicans could gain more than that 190 seats currently held by Democratsaccording to an analysis released in December by voting rights groups Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund. An analysis by The New York Times at the federal level found Democrats persisting lose a dozen seats in the US House of Representatives in the South.
Hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Republicans across the country began calling for maps to be redrawn, especially in states where courts had forced them to create districts in which the majority of residents were black or other racial minorities.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling restricted voting rights. What does this mean and what is happening now?
“All these lines should be colorblind. You should never base a decision on race,” said Arizona Republican Sen. Warren Petersen, president of the state Senate and a candidate for attorney general.
He told Stateline that he believes Arizona should redraw both the congressional and state legislative maps, even if it requires court action.
Republican Governor of Mississippi Tate Reeves a special legislative session was called set for later this month, when he wants lawmakers to draw recent electoral maps for Mississippi Supreme Court districts. A federal judge in Mississippi will have to decide quickly whether to adopt the recent map before a special election scheduled for November.
Democrats also took action. In Illinois, lawmakers withdrew from the proposed constitutional change it would require lawmakers to take race into account when drawing district boundaries, a provision taken directly from the Voting Rights Act. Instead, Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, a Democrat, told Capitol News Illinois that lawmakers want to learn more about the ruling before putting such an amendment on the ballot so that voters can decide to prevent unintended consequences that could undermine the right to vote.
In many states, Republicans are primarily focused on congressional redistricting. Louisiana Republican Governor Jeff Landry He postponed his state’s primary elections for the U.S. House of Representatives even though postal voting has already started. In Alabama, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey A special state legislative session was called intends to move the state’s May 19 primary to at least several districts. Prominent Georgia Republicans also called for a redrawing of their state’s political maps, although GOP Gov. Brian Kemp said in a statement that it was too behind schedule to do so this year.
And in North Dakota, there’s a ruling leaves the tribal redistricting issue in limbo. Tribes used Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to sue the state over the legislative district map approved by the North Dakota Legislature in 2021.
Gerrymandering for partisan gain is legal at the federal level, although some states have their own laws restricting or prohibiting such activity. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is challenging the Supreme Court’s ruling invalidates voter-approved amendments that prevent the state from gerrymandering districts based on race or political party.
However, in most states, state officials can clearly redraw maps to favor Republican voters, for example, as long as they express no intention to disadvantage voters based on race.
“It’s roaring like fire”
Critics of last week’s Callais ruling also fear it will quickly destroy the pipeline that has allowed Black and other minority candidates to be elected to office.
“Now state governments can draw maps that elect their voters rather than voters electing them,” said Lewis, the Louisiana commissioner. “They can weaken the power of Black and brown people in the state legislature, which means there are fewer people to fight a congressional map” that takes voting power away from minority communities.
He worries that if Black Democratic state lawmakers oppose their white Republican colleagues in GOP-majority legislatures, those colleagues could redraw maps to eliminate Black lawmakers’ seats, claiming they are doing so solely for partisan reasons.
The weakening of minority voting power, he said, “will ripple like wildfire.”
At the most local level – city councils and county boards they usually draw these voting mapsbut the ruling could be applied to them as well, said Crum, the law professor.
Arizona is one of the few states where an independent commission, rather than the state legislature, draws both congressional and legislative districts. Except by court order, cannot convene before the turn of the decade.
Petersen, an Arizona state senator, said he is prepared to pursue legal action if the state redistricting commission does not act to redraw districts he believes were unconstitutionally drawn. However, recent maps are not expected before 2028.
“We heard complaints from voters that they didn’t like the way their district was drawn,” he said. “We have some people here in Arizona who represent completely remote areas.
“I really think you could get a better result in some of these legislative districts by removing race-based districts,” he said.
Legislators in some states have tried to protect themselves against the loss of federal protection by enacting their own state-level voting rights laws. Ten states have their own versions federal Voting Rights Act, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington.
Legislators at least in 10 other states This year alone, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Vermont have introduced such bills.
The recent Supreme Court ruling does not make these laws unconstitutional, Crum said.
“But people who want to challenge state voting rights laws will certainly rely on some of the themes” of the recent ruling, Crum said. “You can see them trying to replicate some of the moves that the court made.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct that Maryland has a state voting rights law that passed last week.
Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at: avollers@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by state linewhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes the Ohio Capital Journal and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
