California under pressure — again — as redistricting wars escalate

WASHINGTON— When the U.S. Supreme Court sharply restricted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last week, Democrats in Washington had a message: The redistricting rules have changed, and California, the nation’s biggest blue bastion, may have another role to play.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Democrats should “play by the same rules” as Republicans. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (DY) vowed to fight “in the Deep South and across the country.” Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama was blunt: “I’ll take 52 seats in California, I’m sure. And I’ll take 17 seats in Illinois.”

Calls to action from Republican governors louisiana, alabama, mississippi And Tennessee called for special legislative sessions to redraw congressional maps ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Florida also approved new maps that could give the GOP four more seats in the House, and President Trump has called on other Republican states to follow suit.

The Republican response has intensified pressure on Democrats to act, including in California, where the decision could upend not only congressional maps but also legislative and local races.

“We cannot allow this national necklace effort by Republicans to go unanswered,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach). “If Republicans accept this, I think we should leave all options on the table.”

For now, California’s response is not yet finalized.

The chairman of the California Democratic Party said there are no current plans to redraw maps, just a few months after voters approved a constitutional amendment backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that allows redistricting in the middle of the decade.

The Democratic consultant who drew the state’s current congressional district boundaries says that while an all-blue map is possible, it would likely hurt Democrats more than help them in the long run. And some of the state’s congressional Democrats worry that the drive to go along with the efforts of Republican partisans will be bad for American voters.

“Instead of accelerating the race to the bottom, the next step is to reduce it because you may reach a point of no return,” said Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), one of the state’s most prominent black lawmakers. “And that’s where we’re going.”

What California decides and when it decides will matter nationally. With 52 congressional seats, no state has more seats to offer Democrats in the redistricting battle. But experts, lawmakers and party officials say the path forward is more complicated than calls from Washington suggest.

California could see 48 of 52 blue seats

One reason is that California has already taken action. In 2025, voters approved Proposition 50, which drew new congressional district lines designed to favor Democrats for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections. New maps are already in place that could give Democrats 48 of 52 seats, and voters have begun receiving mail ballots.

Going further is not currently on the table – at least not yet.

“We haven’t yet won exactly the seats on the map drawn in 2025. To say we’re going to go back to the drawing board and redraw the map seems like a step too far,” said Rusty Hicks, chairman of the California Democratic Party.

Hicks said that doesn’t mean the issue can’t be part of a future debate, but he said Democrats in other states shouldn’t overlook what California has already done.

“We’re trying to get 48 of them. How many more do you want us to get? Do you want us to make 52 blue? Then you all should join the challenge,” Hicks said. “You all have to get some involvement. Let’s do this together, because California can’t do this alone, it takes the rest of the country.”

Others are not convinced that the most aggressive option in California makes strategic sense.

Paul Mitchell, the Democratic redistricting consultant who drew California’s Proposition 50 congressional maps, said the push for a 52-0 delegation reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how a partisan map would perform in the state over time.

“A 52-to-zero map would have the potential to backfire,” Mitchell said. “We could have picked up 52 seats in 2026. But then in 2028 or 2030 — let’s say a bad year for Democrats — Democrats lost 11 of those seats. In a good year, you’ve so diabolically pulled those districts to the Democrats’ advantage that in a bad year for Democrats, they don’t have the ability to withstand those challenges.”

Decision could jeopardize state’s voting rights law

The political debate over congressional maps has dominated the debate in Washington so far. But legal experts and redistricting experts say the decision could also have implications for California’s city hall, school board and county supervisor races.

The justices’ ruling, issued by the court’s conservative majority, says states cannot take race into account to create majority-minority districts while allowing states to take partisan interests into account.

“A purely partisan map is now more defensible than a map drawn with racial considerations,” said Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA. “It turns the world upside down.”

Hasen said the decision now puts at risk any district at any level of government that relies on the Voting Rights Act to justify its boundaries.

In California, this uncertainty extends to the regions covered by the agreement. state Voting Rights ActHe said protections for minority voters extend beyond federal law. State law was not directly at issue in the Supreme Court decision, but Hasen argues that the court’s reasoning could provide new legal grounds to challenge state law as potentially unconstitutional.

Cities including Santa Monica and Palmdale have faced lawsuits alleging that their at-large City Council elections diluted the Latino vote. resolved the Palmdale case and agreed to move to district-based elections; Santa Monica’s case is ongoing. Hasen argued that cities and other bodies, such as school boards, can now return to court to challenge whether district maps drawn as a result of the California Voting Rights Act are unconstitutional.

“This hasn’t been tested yet,” he said, but he fears arguments made to challenge the federal Voting Rights Act could also be used against state laws.

State-level Republican strategist Matt Rexroad thinks the decision also affects the California Legislature. He argues that the lines drawn for state House and Senate districts are racial gerrymanders.

“I think these regulations are unconstitutional,” Rexroad said. “And those lines will likely change by 2028.”

But Rexroad’s biggest concern goes beyond any one set of maps: It’s the future of California’s independent redistricting commission, the nonpartisan body he’s been trying to defend for years.

A threat to independent redistricting

Rexroad sees a scenario where the national political environment gives California Democrats little incentive to return map-making authority to the commission. If Republican states continue to aggressively redraw maps, he said, Democrats will have another justification for keeping power in the hands of the Legislature, the same argument for passing Proposition 50.

“I don’t think the California redistricting commission has ever been in greater danger than it is right now,” he said.

J. Morgan Kousser, a historian who has testified as an expert witness in voting rights cases for 47 years, said California’s commitment to the commission may depend on how aggressively Republican states act on redistricting.

“If we go back to the all-white South in Congress, California may not return to its standard of justice,” Kousser said. “He may not disarm. He may re-arm.”

Mitchell, the redistricting consultant, said he hopes California and other states will choose the path of disarmament, and that there is a national push to establish independent commissions in each state.

“This is not good for anyone,” he said. “This was all just a cow war over borders that didn’t actually improve any region.”