A historic drop in representation by Black members of Congress may be on the way after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision Wednesday to further weaken the Voting Rights Act.
The court’s conservative majority reinterpreted longstanding provisions against racial discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Republican calls for new rounds of House map drawing have already begun. How much redistricting can be done in time for this fall’s midterm elections is unclear, though many states have held or are close to holding congressional primaries.
Over the longer term, many redistricting experts expect Republican-controlled state legislatures in the South to eliminate at least some House districts with sizable racial minority populations that were likely protected under the court’s prior interpretation of Section 2. From Louisiana eastward to North Carolina, at least 15 House districts are now at risk of elimination, according to an NPR analysis conducted earlier this year. That list grows if newly redrawn districts in Missouri and Texas are included.
Exactly how redistricting will play out with an eroded Voting Rights Act is hard to predict. Some Democratic-led states may try undoing certain majority-minority districts to spread voters and pick up additional seats. Some GOP-led states may keep such districts for partisan reasons, packing Democratic-leaning voters inside them.
Losing even a handful of those districts could set up the largest-ever decline in the number of Black representatives on Capitol Hill — eclipsing a record set around the end of the post–Civil War Reconstruction era by the Congress that began in 1877, which had four fewer Black House members than the previous session. Black-represented districts were in the single digits or at zero for a century after the Civil War. Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that number grew to 63 districts, about 14% of the House.
The potential drop drew a swift rebuke Wednesday from members of the Congressional Black Caucus. “With this decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court has opened the door to a coordinated attack on Black voters across this country,” Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, chair of the caucus, said during a press conference hours after the decision. “This is an outright power grab. It’s about silencing Black voices, dismantling majority Black districts and rigging the maps so that politicians can choose their voters instead of the other way around.”
In its reinterpretation, the court ruled that a Louisiana congressional district crafted to comply with Section 2 was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and said Section 2 should focus on intentional racial discrimination.
Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama who has led efforts to shore up and expand the Voting Rights Act, said she plans to revise her bill again to “reflect the court cases that have tried to gut” the landmark law. “Listen, we cannot give up,” Sewell said. “We’re not going to give up.”
Atiba Ellis, a law professor and associate dean at Case Western Reserve University, said the ongoing partisan gerrymandering battle between Republicans and Democrats is likely to worsen with a further weakened Voting Rights Act. “This could distort politics in Washington substantially by preventing communities of color from genuinely being heard,” Ellis said. “I think it highly ironic that under the guise of a colorblind Constitution communities of color in a diversifying America could lose the lion’s share of their voice in government.”
Edited by Benjamin Swasey