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The Supreme Court Is Finally Out Of The Gerrymandering Business

It should never have been there in the first place, but the Warren Court couldn’t resist. Now, it’s time to end antidemocratic gerrymandering entirely.

Huck Davenport | May 2, 2026

If the feckless Republicans somehow manage to retain the House in November, look no further than the gift SCOTUS mercifully handed them this week in Louisiana v. Callais: racial challenges to gerrymandering congressional districts are all but over. Gerrymandering itself, however, is not.

So, if gerrymandering is alive and well, why have Dems come out in droves on social media? The paragon of virtue himself, Obama, posted that “The Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy.” “In our democracy”—where have I heard that tired canard before?

Hakeem Jeffries, never to be accused of civility or statesmanship, sent out a press release: “The corrupt conservative majority on the Supreme Court appointed by Donald Trump has taken a blowtorch to the Voting Rights Act. Why? The extremists need to cheat to win.” I guess that’s another Christmas card Justice Alito won’t be getting.

The reason this is such a big deal is that Dems have long enjoyed a substantial gerrymandering advantage due to judicial interpretations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), enacted in 1965. That section states that, “No voting qualification...practice, or procedure shall be imposed...to deny or abridge the right...to vote on account of race or color.”

What seemed facially to be a mandate protecting the right to vote, in the hands of the Warren Court, morphed into restrictions on drawing congressional districts, despite Justice Thomas repeatedly reminding us over three decades, “§2 of the Voting Rights Act does not regulate districting at all.”

Consequently, because blacks overwhelmingly vote Democrat, blue state gerrymanders never ran afoul of the VRA because they maximized the effect of their black voting bloc. Of course, this had nothing at all to do with their being black—it had everything to do with........

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