If Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is dismantled, the impact will reshape political power across the US, experts say.
The US Supreme Court will rehear a case on Wednesday that could strike a death blow to the Voting Rights Act and, in the process, virtually guarantee that Republicans hang on to power in the 2026 midterm elections and well into the future.
At issue in the case, Louisiana v. Callais, is Section 2 of the VRA, which outlaws racially discriminatory redistricting. Max Flugrath, communications director for the voting rights group Fair Fight Action, wrote for Slate that “by taking the unusual step of reopening arguments, legal experts believe, the court’s far-right majority may have telegraphed its intent to dismantle Section 2.”
“If it falls, the impact will reverberate far beyond Louisiana, reshaping political power across the entire country,” he said.
According to a report from Fair Fight and Black Voters Matter, if Section 2 is dismantled, it would guarantee Republicans an additional 19 safe seats in the US House of Representatives, and as many as 27 when combined with the GOP’s Trump-led push for mid-decade gerrymandering.
“It’s enough to cement one-party control of the US House for at least a generation,” according to the report.
The origins of the case itself are highly unusual. It began typically enough, with a conservative Fifth Circuit Court affirming a lower court’s ruling that the congressional maps drawn by the state GOP in 2022 constituted an illegal racial gerrymander. Despite Black residents making up roughly a third of Louisiana’s population, many of them were crammed into a single district, while the other five in the state remained majority white.
After the court ruling, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry convened an emergency legislative session to draw new maps that complied with the court’s order and granted another majority-Black district. But shortly after the map was finalized, it was challenged by a group of white voters, who alleged that by drawing new maps that gave Black voters fairer representation, Louisiana’s legislature was effectively enacting an illegal racial gerrymander against voters who are not Black.
