The ruling has spurred some states to quickly redraw their majority-Black districts. But it may not play out the way some politicians expect
The Supreme Court ruling focused on the Voting Rights Act, a longtime protection against widespread voter discrimination. Photo: Shutterstock
On April 29, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana legislators had broken the law in creating a majority-Black Congressional district, one of many that had been drawn over the decades under the auspice of the Voting Rights Act.
While the court’s conservative majority said it was updating how the act should be interpreted based on increased minority registration and turnout, the liberal dissenters said the ruling was an erosion of a civil rights law that is still needed.
The Voting Rights Act, which was designed to increase minority representation in Congress, is based on the idea that Black candidates are more likely to run and be elected in districts with large Black populations. Research also shows that Black voters are more likely to turn out when a Black candidate is on the ballot.
“It’s a cycle, a reinforcing effect, that may now disappear” with the new ruling, said Brian Schaffner, political science professor and Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life.
The ruling opened the door for Republican-led states to redraw their majority-minority districts, seemingly in their party’s favor. But Schaffner, who studies American elections and is co-principal investigator of the Cooperative Elections Study, said those who think some quick gerrymandering means an easy win may be in for some surprises.
Can you put this ruling in historical context?
It continues a line we’ve seen with the majority of this court in recent years, making an argument that some of the legal framework that we’ve had in place to address historical discrimination is no longer necessary.
We had already seen with the Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013 an eroding of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which required certain states to get preclearance for things like redrawing their congressional districts and changing voting laws. That removed a proactive enforcement that was designed to protect minority voters. And now this ruling goes further, saying that some of these steps being taken to address historical discrimination are actually unconstitutional.
What are the consequences?
The most obvious one is that states no longer have to draw districts that are designed to elect Black representatives when they have a significant Black population in the state. States with very large Black populations like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Georgia generally have to have one or two congressional districts where at least 50% of the voters are African American. This ruling is essentially saying you don’t have to do that anymore.
Given that all those states are more Republican than Democratic, and run by Republican legislatures, I suspect we’ll see those states removing those districts from their maps in the coming years.
Some states are already scrambling to change those districts before the midterms. Will it have immediate effects?
It’s an awkward time to be doing this, this late in the calendar when a lot of states are already having primaries, but there could be some immediate effects with Republicans gaining seats. However, it could also potentially backfire on Republicans a bit.
If you remove a majority-minority district, that means you’re spreading Democratic voters into other districts, which is going to increase their Democratic vote share.
In a midterm election year, when your party controls the presidency, you generally lose seats; you especially lose seats when your president is unpopular. If we’re thinking this has the potential to be an election that swings pretty strongly towards Democrats, and the redistricting makes some districts a little more Democratic, some races might become much closer. Republicans could end up losing two seats instead of the one that they would have lost in the majority-minority district.
It’s easy to say, “Oh, we’ve removed this provision, now all these states are going to delete these districts,” but that’s not how it works. They don’t get deleted; they just get reshuffled. And that reshuffling is a messy process with lots of potential implications.
It’s hard to say, because it depends on how savvy the map drawers are, but I think it’s going to be harder than people think to remove these districts without also creating more competitive districts. And the Republican incumbents in those districts are not going to be happy getting a bunch of new Democratic voters. So, there will probably some pushback from them.
What other fallout will you be watching for?
One potential negative consequence may be that fewer Black Americans turn out to vote.
A big reason the Voting Rights Act directed the creation of majority-minority districts was the idea that descriptive representation—seeing someone like yourself running for or in office—matters for African Americans. It makes them feel that they can influence elections.
Despite what some of the justices want to claim in their opinions, the empirical evidence shows that the turnout rate for African Americans still lags behind that of white Americans. The rates were close in the two Obama elections, but not before or since.
So you might see African Americans lose even more ground to whites in terms of how much they vote, which would certainly be unfortunate.
Will Black Americans find it more difficult to have a voice?
The idea behind majority-minority districts is that to get good representation in Congress, African Americans need to be able to elect African American members of Congress. I think there’s a little more nuance. Some research shows that majority-minority districts don’t help African Americans.
We talk about descriptive representation, which is how much a group is able to elect people that look like them. But there’s also substantive representation, which is how much a group gets the policies they want out of Congress.
There’s some research suggesting that there’s a trade-off: these majority-minority districts might actually undermine substantive representation a bit, because Democrats, typically the party that represents African Americans, maybe don’t win as many seats as they would otherwise.
Part of that is because by packing African American Democrats into one district, they’re actually diluting their influence. If they made up a significant share of the population in more districts, they would actually have more influence over more members of Congress. You might see more members of Congress voting more liberal on issues that affect African Americans. That would potentially benefit African Americans more.
