Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and other southern US states are rapidly redrawing congressional maps to eliminate Democratic districts and reduce the influence of Black voters, following a Supreme Court ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act. The moves come even as some states have already begun primary elections, prompting criticism from civil rights groups.
Tennessee Republicans have enacted a new map that splits the majority-Black city of Memphis into three districts, effectively removing the state's sole Democrat from Congress. Louisiana is poised to implement a map that would eliminate one of its two Black Democratic representatives, while Alabama has secured Supreme Court approval to scrap a district currently held by a Black Democrat, replacing it with a map previously ruled discriminatory.
In South Carolina, the Republican governor is expected to call a special session to redraw the map and target the district of Jim Clyburn, a prominent Black House Democrat. Georgia and Mississippi have opted not to redraw ahead of the 2022 midterms but may do so before 2028. States like Texas, Missouri, Florida and North Carolina, which already added Republican districts, could also redraw again.
“This is a five-alarm fire for Black representation in the south,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The court has signaled it’s going to be a redistricting wild west, and there will be no sheriff around.” Alabama and Louisiana have taken the unprecedented step of cancelling primary elections after voting began, discarding over 42,000 ballots in Louisiana alone.
The Congressional Black Caucus, at an all-time high of 58 members, faces potential decimation. Democrats are considering counteroffensives in states like New York and Illinois, but face legal hurdles. The ACLU has sued Tennessee over its new map, and civil rights groups have asked a federal court to block Alabama's map. A conservative group has also cited the Supreme Court's decision to challenge Illinois' voting rights act.
“It’s not rolling things back to where they were in 2010. It’s rolling things back to where they were in 1975,” said Stuart Naifeh of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “The risk is that Black representation will disappear from the south and potentially other places too. And Latino representation as well.”
