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By Tom Rogers
Editor-at-Large for Newsweek
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There has been an enormous amount of press coverage of the battle over gerrymandering in the last month. The first shot was President Donald Trump requesting that Texas Governor Greg Abbott create five new Republican congressional districts to make it more likely that the Republicans hold on to the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections. The Republican-dominated Texas legislature has now adopted such a plan, hoping to avoid the typical midterm election outcome of the party occupying the White House losing 20 or more House seats. Given that the Democrats would only have to pick up four seats to take control of the House, the Texas action is highly meaningful.
The next shot came from California Governor Gavin Newsom, who fired back with a threat to rewrite his state's congressional map to add five Democratic seats. Newsom made very clear that his actions are solely a response to the Texas plan and that California's nonpartisan map drawing approach would be reinstituted at a later date. Newsom's plan, however, would have to be passed in a special referendum this November by California voters.
There is a great deal of speculation as to where the next shots will come from. Ohio and Indiana Republicans may be able to rewrite their congressional maps to create a couple more Republican districts. Missouri is another state that could take action, and there may be some opportunity in Florida and other states to squeeze out additional Republican districts. On the other side of the aisle, there is potential for New York and Illinois to create a few more Democratic seats.
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If all of this plays out to its fullest partisan extent, the Republicans are likely to pick up a five- to eight-seat advantage. However, there is a wild card that could significantly benefit the Republicans and create an opportunity for so much additional redistricting that even if the Democrats do as well as the opposition party typically does in the midterms, it may not be enough to win a majority. That wild card: the Supreme Court.
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The issue revolves around the Supreme Court delaying its decision in Louisiana v. Callais at the end of its last term in June. This case would have determined whether one of Louisiana's two majority-Black Congressional Districts was an impermissible racial gerrymander. This delay has created major speculation that the ultimate decision in this case could have far-reaching effects on the 2026 election map. The case, which the Court has held over for its new term, poses the question of whether creating majority-minority districts may be unconstitutional because the district lines are drawn primarily on the basis of race.
Creating majority-Black districts in the South has been a longstanding remedy to the historic dispersal of minority populations across multiple districts to dilute their voting power. Concentrating the Black population in a majority-minority district assures some degree of representation. In Louisiana, for instance, Black residents make up about one-third of the state's population, but only one of the state's six House seats represented a majority-Black district. After the Voting Rights Act was used to strike down that Congressional District map, the state created an additional Black-majority district.
While Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race in voting laws, when it comes to redistricting it has been used to make sure minority voters do not have their vote diluted. But in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court has asked for arguments on whether majority-minority districts themselves violate the 14th and 15th Amendments by creating congressional districts largely or solely on the basis of race. Given that the Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has already significantly undermined past interpretations of Voting Rights Act, there is significant anticipation that the majority-minority districts will be struck down as unconstitutional.
A number of questions arise: Would the Supreme Court rule that its decision applies beyond Louisiana to all states that have majority-minority districts? Would the Supreme Court decide the case quickly enough into its new term, which begins in early October, such that any required changes to congressional maps would be put into effect for the 2026 midterm elections?
The impact would be felt most significantly in Republican-controlled Southern states including Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Beyond Texas, there are approximately 13 U.S. House seats in red states with majority-minority populations that could be directly impacted by a Supreme Court ruling. There are a number of majority-minority districts in blue states as well which, if viewed by the Court as unconstitutionally created, could further complicate blue-state efforts to respond to Texas-style extreme gerrymandering. There are also 37 majority Hispanic or Latino Congressional Districts. If these are ruled unconstitutional, it could further throw up in the air a number of states' current election maps.
Whether the Supreme Court fires this blast or not, Republicans need to be aware that breaking up majority-minority districts, and dispersing those voters into neighboring districts to dilute their voting power, may well make those neighboring districts less safe for Republican incumbents. It would amount to an influx of Democratic votes into Republican-held districts. In a tide election, that could endanger seats that were previously safely Republican. However, when you add to the list of newly gerrymandered seats coming out of Texas, and the greater difficulty blue states have in matching what may be similar actions by other red states, and then add on top of that a large number of majority-minority districts potentially being thrown up in the air, it may be much harder for the Democrats to gain control of the House in the short term.
Given all the progress that has been made over the 60 years since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, it would be an enormous step backwards to see such important civil rights work set back and dissolved. It is one thing for discrimination to be race based; it is quite another to declare efforts to overcome discrimination aimed at suppressing minority vote as unconstitutional. California may have taken on Texas, but in this instance, there is no counter force to neutralize how the Supreme Court might rule.
Tom Rogers is executive chairman of Claigrid, Inc. (the cloud AI grid company), an editor-at-large for Newsweek, the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor. He also established MSNBC, is the former CEO of TiVo, a member of Keep Our Republic (an organization dedicated to preserving the nation's democracy). He is also a member of the American Bar Association Task Force on Democracy.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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