The Supreme Court has dawdled too long to give the Republicans the midterm elections

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

But that scenario was based on a decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act shortly after the court heard the new argument on Oct. 15. And it didn’t happen, at least it hasn’t happened yet. No decision has been released, and right now the earliest it could come is the end of March. It will be too late for nearly all Southern states to redraw their maps if the court rules as expected and guts the Voting Rights Act.

“We’re at a point where it’s functionally impossible for most Southern states to redraw their maps unless they do something extraordinary like change or redo the 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 been held. In others, deadlines to finalize and print ballots and then send them to military and overseas voters are quickly approaching.

North Carolina and Texas held their primaries on March 3. Mississippi will hold its primary on March 10. Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia will begin mailing ballots to military and foreign voters in the first week of April for their May primaries. South Carolina will also have to send out mail-in ballots in late April for its June primary. That leaves only Florida and Tennessee, with primaries in August, as possibly capable of reapportionment if a decision is made in late March. However, later it will be increasingly difficult to see a way forward.

In theory, some of these states could postpone their primaries and filing deadlines to late summer or September, but that’s an expensive process that typically only happens under court order.

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Republicans had hoped the court would strike down or destroy the use of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits “a denial or limitation of the right… to vote” that would leave minority voters with “fewer opportunities… to participate in the political processes and to elect representatives of their choice,” in redistricting.

Such a decision would have allowed states to redraw their maps to divide majority-black districts and redistrict them into multiple districts to eliminate them and create new Republican and majority-white seats.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, had even called the legislature into a special session for redistricting last October in case the court ruled quickly.

If the court had acted quickly enough so that nine relevant states had time to redistrict, it could have allowed the southern states: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. – eliminate up to 19 House seats with black majorities or pluralities that are also held by Democrats, according to a report by Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based progressive voting rights group.

This would not only have ended black political power in the South, but would have also made it increasingly difficult for Democrats to regain control of the House in the midterm elections.

Republicans currently hold a bare four-seat majority in the House: Democrats simply need to gain three seats to take control. Transitioning 19 safe Democratic seats to the GOP column (even if some of those seats ended up as swing districts when the environment favors Democrats) would be a huge obstacle to regaining the majority.

That scenario, in all likelihood, is ruled out for now. But the court will rule sometime this year, and if it strikes down or seriously guts the Voting Rights Act, mid-cycle redistricting will be on the table ahead of the 2027 state elections in Mississippi and Louisiana and the 2028 congressional elections.

“It is likely to happen before the 2028 election because we have seen that the White House wants to maximize its partisan advantage,” said Amir Badat, director of Fair Fight Action in the southern states. “And he wants to do it by diminishing the political power of black voters and other voters of color across the country.”