The Supreme Court Has Dawdled Too Long To Gift Republicans The Midterms

It's now "functionally impossible" for Republicans to redraw House maps for the 2026 midterms if the Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act.

When the Supreme Court ordered last year that the case of Louisiana v. Callais be re-argued, it raised a potential nightmare scenario: If the court ruled the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional when applied to redistricting or otherwise gutted it, it could enable Southern states to decimate Black voters’ power, eliminating up to 19 House seats currently held by Black Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterms.

But that scenario rested on a decision gutting the Voting Rights Act coming soon after the court heard the re-argument on Oct. 15. And it didn’t happen — at least, it hasn’t yet. A decision hasn’t been released, and at this point, the earliest it could come is late March. That will be too late for almost all Southern states to redraw their maps if the court rules as expected and guts the Voting Rights Act.

“We’re at the point where it’s functionally impossible for most Southern states to redraw their maps, unless they do something extraordinary like move or redo primaries,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive nonprofit.

It’s a simple matter of calendars. In some states, primaries have already happened. In others, deadlines to finalize and print ballots and then send them out to military and overseas voters are coming up fast.

North Carolina and Texas held their primary elections on March 3. Mississippi will hold its primaries on March 10. Alabama, Louisiana, and Georgia will begin mailing ballots to military and overseas voters in the first week of April for their May primaries. South Carolina will also need to send out mail ballots by the end of April for its June primaries. That leaves just Florida and Tennessee, with August primaries, as possibly able to redistrict if a decision comes out by the end of March. Any later, though, and it becomes increasingly hard to see a path forward.