Republicans on a U.S. Senate panel suggested Tuesday a recent Supreme Court decision weakening the federal Voting Rights Act invalidated U.S. House districts in Democratic states where most residents belong to a racial minority group.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, a Missouri Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, signaled that Republicans will target majority-minority districts in blue states as they seek to maximize their opportunities to reshape the political map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. GOP-controlled Southern states are already rushing forward gerrymanders.
Schmitt urged the Department of Justice to crack down on states with maps drawn to protect majority-minority districts. A top DOJ official has suggested the agency supports scrutinizing the districts. The demand seems to extend the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision that limited states from using race to draw districts.
“These maps do not become constitutional because they’re already in use,” Schmitt said. “They do not survive because politicians call them voting rights maps. Yet, they will not disappear on their own. The Department of Justice has an obligation to act.”
The court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision gave states the OK to eliminate districts where most residents belong to racial minority groups in the pursuit of a partisan advantage. Alabama, Florida and Tennessee have advanced new maps, and Louisiana is expected to follow soon. South Carolina is debating its own gerrymander.
The new district lines, along with gerrymanders enacted before the Callais decision, could ultimately provide Republicans with a net gain of upwards of 10 seats.
The seats could prove critical as Republicans face political headwinds approaching the midterm elections amid sagging approval numbers for President Donald Trump. A successful legal campaign that forces Democratic states to break apart majority-minority districts could create additional competitive House races.
Breaking up Democratic districtsAbout one-third of all House districts drawn following the 2020 census were majority-minority, according to a Ballotpedia analysis — 148 in all. Democrats held 122 as of 2024.
Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, wrote on social media on April 30 that the department continues to prioritize equal protection under the law, including in voting. Dhillon’s post came in response to a letter Schmitt sent to DOJ raising similar points to what he said on Tuesday.
“Senator — we are ON IT!” Dhillon wrote.
Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat and the subcommittee’s ranking member, said the Supreme Court’s decision leaves many communities of color with few enforceable tools to fight unfair maps. He called on the Senate to act by passing a federal ban on mid-decade redistricting and partisan gerrymandering.
“Our democracy depends ultimately on protecting and preserving the right of individual citizens to pick their politicians, not intensifying the control that politicians have about who the voters are that they will permit to be involved in the election,” Welch said.
‘The definition of racism’Some Republicans have begun to cast majority-minority districts as racist. The loaded rhetoric suggests eliminating these districts is not just politically useful but also a legal and moral imperative.
Missouri, where Republicans hold six of the state’s eight congressional districts, exemplifies the new reality under Callais. The Republican-controlled General Assembly approved a map in September that divides Kansas City in a bid to oust Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who has long represented the city core.
State lawmakers left in place a St. Louis-area district held by Democratic Rep. Wesley Bell where fewer than half of residents are white. But some Missouri Republicans have called the district a racial gerrymander and want the General Assembly to split it apart, too.
“That’s the definition of racism, is drawing districts based on the color of one’s skin,” Missouri Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins told reporters last week. “We don’t want that in Missouri.”
The Supreme Court in the Callais decision did not formally strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race and other characteristics. In practice, however, it may be effectively impossible for gerrymandering opponents to prove discrimination, voting rights experts say.
“It begs the question whether or not lawmakers will have to say, ‘not only do I not like Black voters, but this is the reason why I’m drawing up this piece of legislation,’” Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO of the nonpartisan voting rights group Fair Elections Center, said in an interview with States Newsroom days after the release of the Supreme Court opinion.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court cleared away a court order that had blocked Alabama from implementing a map passed by state lawmakers in 2023 that could hand Republicans another seat. A lower court had found the map violated Section 2.
In Louisiana, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry suspended the state’s ongoing congressional primary election in anticipation of a new map that will likely eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black districts. The Supreme Court fast-tracked paperwork in its Callais decision to clear the way for state lawmakers to act quickly.
Obligation to actDuring Tuesday’s Senate hearing, Will Chamberlain, senior counsel at the Article III Project, a conservative legal group, said all states with maps drawn to protect minority representation have a “clear duty” to redraw them using race-neutral criteria.
The calendar should be no obstacle, he argued, saying state legislatures can be called into special session and primary elections delayed until new maps are in place.
“The fact that we are well into the 2026 election cycle provides no blanket exemption from these constitutional obligations,” Chamberlain said.
Callais has unleashed chaos and already undercut fair representation for Black voters, Todd Cox, associate director-counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, told the subcommittee. But he argued the decision doesn’t call into question the constitutionality of majority-minority districts or other districts that give voters of color an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
Cox cautioned against using Callais to justify targeting majority-minority districts that provide that opportunity, saying it might indicate that states intentionally discriminated against minority voters.
This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent.
