Black lawmakers are raising concerns that the Supreme Court’s recent Voting Rights Act ruling could soon reshape redistricting at the local level.
According to NPR, at least 17 lawsuits have been filed against voting maps in state and local governments since the ruling, largely by Black voters affected by the redistricting proposals diluting their voting power.
The ruling significantly weakened long-standing Voting Rights Act protections used to challenge redistricting maps in court. Of the 17 lawsuits listed, 14 are in Republican-led Southern states, which have been leading the charge to redraw districts to benefit the party in the November midterms.
While Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Chair Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., told NBC News that as many as 19 of the group’s 58 members could be affected by redistricting efforts, Black lawmakers nationwide are reportedly growing more concerned with how the ruling will affect state legislative elections.
“Congress is just one level, but it’s state legislatures, it’s county commissions, it’s city councils that’s a part of the conversation,” Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, told Politico on May 16.
Estimates from Fair Fight Action and the Black Voters Matter Fund found that the Supreme Court ruling puts nearly 200 Democratic-held state legislative seats at risk of elimination, with some states potentially rushing to redraw legislative maps to gain an edge in the midterms.
Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, told the outlet that Section 2 protections previously helped ensure that racial minorities in some municipalities had a realistic opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
Now, he says the ruling could make it easier for municipalities to justify redistricting decisions based on political priorities rather than racial representation.
“The real danger now is you're going to see the white majority in these places reassert its primacy and really design maps to lock it in,” Li said. "I think that you will increasingly see people at the local level assert that they, too, have various kinds of political interest and they want a certain political outcome, whether that is protecting existing incumbents or whether it is making sure that a school board has conservative tax policies.”
One of the few states that has already taken steps to redraw legislative lines is Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp called a special session last week to redraw both congressional and legislative lines ahead of the 2028 cycle.
However, Black voters in Georgia have already filed lawsuits against the state's legislative map, as well as two more against county commissions in Houston and Meriwether counties. Mississippi is facing ongoing legal battles against one of its Supreme Court districts in the wake of Gov. Tate Reeves pushing back a special redistricting session originally scheduled for May 20.
“It's very important for folk to be vigilant and to participate on the local levels, ensuring that they're aware of what's happening, because there are some jurisdictions that could decide, 'You know, we're going to move from districts to at-large,' " Gilda Daniels, law professor at the University of Baltimore, told NPR.
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