How the Supreme Court kickstarted the redistricting arms race
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Police officers stand guard outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on June 27. Photo: Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images
Republicans' plan to redraw Texas's congressional district map years early launched a nationwide battle, with Democrats promising to retaliate with new partisan maps of their own.
The big picture: The war to win the congressional maps is a result of a 2019 Supreme Court decision eliminating federal guardrails against partisan gerrymandering.
- President Trump has urged Texas Republicans to draw a new map more favorable to the GOP before the 2026 midterms.
- Democrats in New York and California have vowed to retaliate in kind.
Context: The Supreme Court ignited the new wave of gerrymandering with a 2019 opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts that held that partisan gerrymandering claims "present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts."
- "Federal judges have no license to reallocate political power between the two major political parties," Roberts wrote.
- Roberts added that "the fact that such gerrymandering is 'incompatible with democratic principles,' ... does not mean that the solution lies with the federal judiciary."
What they're saying: Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck said that the Supreme Court's decision "left it as open-season for whatever the legislature can get away with" in states where lawmakers control the maps.
The other side: Justice Elena Kagan in her 2019 dissent warned that "[o]f all times to abandon the Court's duty to declare the law, this was not the one."
- She added, "The practices challenged in these cases imperil our system of government."
Zoom out: In 2024, the Supreme Court made it even more difficult to challenge congressional maps when it upheld a South Carolina district map that a lower court found was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
- Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito rejected the lower court's conclusion.
- He wrote that "inferring bad faith based on the racial effects of a political gerrymander in a jurisdiction in which race and partisan preference are very closely correlated" could allow future litigants to sidestep the 2019 decision that partisan gerrymandering claims are out of the federal courts' reach.
Friction point: Kagan, who again authored the dissent, said the decision sent a message to state legislators and mapmakers, who may use race "as a proxy to achieve partisan ends" or "straight-up suppress" minority voters' electoral influence: "Go right ahead, this Court says to States today."
State of play: Texas could be just the tip of the iceberg, as the redistricting push sparks a chain reaction before the 2026 midterms.
- As Axios' Alex Isenstadt and Megan Stringer report, redistricting for partisan advantage is nothing new — but the mid-decade scramble comes well ahead of the 2030 census, after which redistricting normally takes place.
- Kagan in her 2019 dissent, said gerrymandering "helps create the polarized political system so many Americans loathe."
- She continued, "Is it conceivable that someday voters will be able to break out of that prefabricated box? Sure. But everything possible has been done to make that hard. To create a world in which power does not flow from the people because they do not choose their governors."
Go deeper: "I hate it": Redistricting arms race gives lawmakers heartburn
