The Supreme Court’s redistricting ruling could shift the balance of power in Washington. How will it affect the midterms?

On April 29, the Supreme Court issued a decision that could change American politics for the foreseeable future by making it harder for lawmakers to create districts that protect nonwhite voters from discrimination and easier to create districts that help their own party win.

Even before the court’s latest bombshell, partisan redistricting (the process of states redrawing their voting maps to benefit the party in power) was already rampant in the United States; Republicans in red states (like Texas) and Democrats in blue states (like California) were making unprecedented efforts to maximize electoral power in the middle of the last decade.

But now it’s likely to be turbocharged.

Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and subsequent Supreme Court decisions, lawmakers have been allowed for decades to consider the racial makeup of a district when drawing district boundaries. The goal was to eliminate systemic barriers to equal representation by creating districts where voters of color would be empowered to choose their preferred candidates and to prevent politicians from dismantling those districts for pure partisan gain.

But in a new way 6-3 decisionThe court’s conservative majority ruled that this long-standing interpretation of the law was no longer valid. Instead, the majority declared that Louisiana lawmakers had violated the Constitution by using race to draft a new congressional map, known as SB8, that created a second majority-black district in their state.

“Because the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the State’s use of race in creating SB8, and this map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.” opinion stated.

To undo the congressional maps, the opinion said, plaintiffs must prove that the maps were “intentionally” designed to disenfranchise voters “because of their race,” meaning they were discriminatory. effect is insufficient. In the absence of such evidence, the opinion continued, the law “shall not interfere with the prerogative of states to draw districts based on non-racial factors, including to obtain partisan advantage.”

Trying to gain partisan advantage is exactly what will happen. Already this week, Republican lawmakers in at least four Southern states — Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee — have begun the process of potentially eliminating Black-majority districts at least ahead of November’s midterm elections.

This is the latest chapter of America’s tit-for-tat, no-holds-barred redistricting era. Here’s everything you need to know to follow Republicans and Democrats as they try to reshape the political landscape; including how their efforts could impact the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election.

What is redistricting

The census, held every 10 years, determines how the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are divided among the states. Once states know how many seats they will have, they can choose how to divide their districts into their allotted number of districts.

In most cases, district maps are approved by the state legislature, creating a clear incentive for the party in power to change the maps to suit their own interests. When they do this, it’s called gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is nothing new, but it has become increasingly important over the past two decades as both parties have become increasingly aggressive about how they slice district maps to maximize the number of seats their members win.

Here’s a simple example of how gerrymandering can allow a party with a slim majority of voters to dominate a state’s congressional representation. Click the arrows below to cycle through various redistricting scenarios.

What happened so far?

The country was already in the middle of a crisis unprecedented redistricting race Even before the Supreme Court’s decision was announced.

It started last summer in Texas, where the Republican-led Legislature was pushing new district lines after the midterm elections that would likely give Republicans five additional seats in the House.

Three other red states quickly followed suit. Missouri and North Carolina drew their congressional maps to give the GOP another seat from their states. Ohio approved a new map that could flip a seat or two to Republicans. Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been discussing redistricting plans for months, finally made it official Monday by signing a new map that could give Republicans some insight. four additional seats.

Democrats in California have moved to block GOP gains by pushing a new map with five new safe Democratic seats. California law required voters to approve the amendment, and they did so by a landslide last November. A judge in Utah ordered the GOP-run state Legislature to throw out the previous map that made all four of its districts safe for Republicans. The decision is likely to give Democrats another seat. Last month, voters in Virginia approved a new map for their state that could give Democrats four more seats in the House.

Assuming all new state maps withstand ongoing legal challenges, the redistricting fight has so far done little to shift the potential balance of power in Congress. When all the changes are tallied, Republicans may be ahead by two or three seats; It’s a relatively minor change in the 435-member parliament.

What does the interim decision of the Supreme Court mean?

All of the redistricting so far has been under the old interpretation of the law, which limits how much of an area with a concentration of minority voters can be divided. The court’s new decision will weaken those protections and make some challenges harder to win, opening the door for states to control congressional maps more aggressively than before.

However, the timing of the court’s decision limits how much it could impact this year’s midterms. Most states are already into party primaries, which means it’s too late for them to redraw district lines at this point.

But it will have at least some effect. Four Republican-led states are scrambling to implement new maps in time to be used this election cycle.

The day after the decision was announced, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry suspended the House primaries in his state to give the legislature time to approve a new congressional map. New standards set by the Supreme Court could theoretically allow Louisiana Republicans to eliminate both majority-Black districts in the state, but reports suggest they’ll probably go after a map that breaks down just one of these regions.

Republicans in Tennessee are also moving quickly to approve a new map that would likely carve up the state’s only Democratic-controlled district and give the GOP full control of Tennessee’s nine House seats.

Tennessee provides an example of how the court decision enabled more aggressive gerrymandering. The state’s lone blue district includes Memphis, which is more than 60% black, according to the U.S. census. Until recently, courts could reject a map that fractured Memphis’ minority voting bloc as violating the Voting Rights Act. But now, with protections weakened, Republicans suggest a map This will fragment Memphis, so its voters will be dispersed into several safe red counties.

The Alabama Legislature is also is holding a special session on redistricting to potentially pass a new map that could eliminate one or both of the state’s two Democratic districts. But this effort is complicated for a reason. court order Alabama is prohibited from changing its maps until 2030. In light of its decision, the state attorney general asked the Supreme Court to overturn that order.

South Carolina state legislature took the first steps A potential redistricting push that would likely target the state’s only Democratic district.

If all four states can produce new maps, Republicans could be given four or five more seats.

How could things get heated ahead of the 2028 elections?

The direct impact of the new Supreme Court decision may be modest. But if several Republican-led Southern states manage to redraw their maps this year as a result of the decision, Democratic states are likely to try to retaliate in 2027 and beyond.

There are rumors that New York and Colorado could step in first, following in the footsteps of California and Virginia, to help undo Republican gains in the South. If these two states eventually amend their constitutions to allow partisan and legislative redistricting, they could theoretically put in place: 11 additional congressional districts Under democratic control.

More extreme scenarios are also possible: Last week, a Democratic congressman from Alabama reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision: saying he was now happily slicing and dicing predetermined maps to “get 52 seats from California and 17 seats from Illinois.”

This means unanimous democratic control of each state’s congressional delegation. But it would also create even more complex districts that trample on longstanding norms—such as keeping communities of interest together, maintaining geographic compactness, protecting the voting power of minorities—and risk further eroding Americans’ confidence in their democracy, as gerrymandering has already done.

The question for 2027 and beyond is whether either side is willing to go that far; because if one does this, the other is almost certain to follow. As a result, The New York Times I recently put would be a “great carving” [that] “It could effectively weaken the power of millions, especially minority voters, and make partisan primaries more important than general elections when it comes to choosing leaders.”

“I’ve felt for a long time that we should all play by the same rules,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, told reporters Wednesday. But “if Republicans are going to redraw North Carolina, if they’re going to redraw Texas, if they’re going to redraw and they’re going to redraw every single one of their states, then unfortunately, we’re going to have to maintain that balance until we get to the day when we can finally agree to put this behind us.”

Nearly 6 million people voted for Republican House candidates in California in 2024. In the most extreme scenario, the voices of these 6 million voters will be effectively erased from the electoral process. The same thing could happen to 4 million Democratic voters in Texas or 3 million Republican voters in New York, and so on, state after state.