Four States, One Map, and the Voting Rights Act After the Court
Republican legislatures across the South are redrawing congressional districts after a Supreme Court decision narrowed minority-vote protections. The fights are local; the design is coordinated.
Within weeks of the Court's ruling, four southern states moved to take up new maps. The bills differ in their particulars; their architecture does not. In each case, Black-majority districts are reduced or restructured, and the seats they once anchored shift toward a different — more Republican — coalition.
Civil-rights litigators are preparing the next round of suits. Their problem is precedent: the doctrine they relied upon for forty years has been narrowed by the Court that would now hear them.
South Carolina is the outlier. Its Republican-led Senate this week rejected a redistricting push despite pressure from the White House — a reminder that the strategy is not yet uniformly accepted within the party.
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