On April 29, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, ruling that Louisiana’s congressional map that added a second majority-Black district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Louisiana Legislature added the second majority-Black district in response to a previous lawsuit that argued the original map with one majority-Black district violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting minority votes.
The Callais decision will affect how Section 2, which prohibits voting practices and procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, is applied in future disputes over district boundaries.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion that Section 2 “requires evidence giving rise to a strong inference of intentional discrimination. If race and politics are not disentangled and a Section 2 claim is cynically used as a tool for advancing a partisan end, the VRA’s noble goal will be perverted.” Alito wrote that in the case against the original map, “Much of the cited evidence—such as the low number of black Louisianans who have been elected to Congress in recent decades—failed to disentangle race from politics.”
As a result, Alito concluded that “because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8 [the map with the second majority-Black district]. That map is an unconstitutional gerrymander, and its use would violate the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”
Justice Elena Kegan wrote, dissenting, “The consequences are likely to be far-reaching and grave. Today’s decision renders Section 2 all but a dead letter. In the States where that law continues to matter—the States still marked by residential segregation and racially polarized voting—minority voters can now be cracked out of the electoral process.”
Effect on the 2026 U.S. House midterms
According to the Associated Press’ Mark Sherman, Harvard election law scholar Nicholas Stephanopoulos estimates that nearly 70 of the nation’s 435 congressional districts are protected by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Sherman wrote, “It’s not clear whether the decision was issued early enough for some states, including Louisiana, to consider a new round of redistricting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, in which Republicans are trying to preserve a thin majority.” Some filing deadlines have already passed, and primaries are approaching in many states.
Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), where a special session for congressional redistricting was already underway, circulated the decision to lawmakers Wednesday morning, urging passage of the new congressional map his office proposed earlier this week.
In the letter, DeSantis likened Florida’s compliance with the state’s Fair Districts Amendment to Louisiana’s compliance with the Voting Rights Act: “Much like Louisiana’s ‘intentional compliance with the court’s demands constituted an express acknowledgement that race played a role in the drawing of district lines,’ Florida’s intentional compliance with the FDA would constitute such an acknowledgement and therefore would require Florida ‘to satisfy the extraordinarily onerous standard of proving that its use of race was narrowly tailored to further a compelling government interest’” — which DeSantis argued the state cannot do and so should pass the new district boundaries.
On April 29, 2026, the Florida House voted 83-28 to approve the map, which would shift four seats towards Republicans according to the 2024 presidential election results. The Florida Senate took a break to review the Callais decision before delivering a 21-17 vote approving the map, advancing it to DeSantis for his signature.
So far, six states will have new U.S. House district boundaries in the 2026 midterms, with a potential seventh in Virginia, where a voter-approved redistricting referendum is currently blocked from certification by court order.
The table below shows the net effect of mid-decade redistricting nationwide should either, both, or neither of Florida and Virginia’s maps take effect.
Effect on redistricting moving forward
Other states may pursue map redraws ahead of the 2028 elections.
The Downballot identified 12 districts across eight southern states where Republicans could aim to redraw following the Callais decision. The Downballot’s David Nir and Stephen Wolf wrote, “The lone saving grace for Democrats—and the cause of voting rights—is that it’s too late in the 2026 election cycle for most states to implement changes in time for the November elections, with Florida a major exception. They can, however, get started on 2028 right now.”
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) tweeted on April 24, 2026, that he was calling a special session for congressional redistricting to begin 21 days after the Callais decision. That date would be May 20, 2026.
Republicans currently have a 217-212-1 majority in the U.S. House, with five vacancies. The general election is Nov. 3.
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