FILE – The U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File)
There’s been no shortage of expressed outrage from the left in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which significantly limits states’ efforts at racial gerrymandering. A Salon headline captures the progressive indignation: “Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act in ‘Jim Crow 2.0 ruling.’” The left can never be accused of understatement.
But the change needed to happen because U.S. demographics are making racial gerrymandering increasingly difficult. And that’s a good thing.
To prevent minority-voter dilution under Section 2 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, those drawing congressional maps in certain states have had to create one or more (depending on the size of the state’s minority population) majority-minority districts so that a minority candidate has a better chance of winning. In 2024 there were 148 majority-minority districts in 28 states, though not all were mandated.
The 1986 Supreme Court decision in Thornburg v. Gingles created a three-part test in order to determine whether racial dilution was involved. The first requirement says, “The minority group must be able to demonstrate that it is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district.” That’s harder to do today.
Regardless of what one thinks of the court’s decision, or the motives behind it, racial gerrymandering has increasingly struggled to meet that “sufficiently large and geographically compact” requirement for at least three demographic reasons.
Read the full article on TheHill.com