Southern Republicans move to dismantle majority-Black districts after ruling

Republican-controlled legislatures across the South moved quickly after the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, using the decision’s limits on race-based districting to reopen maps that had given Black voters a path to elect candidates of their choice. The 6-3 ruling struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, saying the state had relied too heavily on race when it created a second majority-Black House district, a reading voting-rights advocates say could sharply narrow the reach of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Tennessee acted first. On May 7, Republicans approved a new congressional map that dismantles the state’s only majority-Black district, centered on Memphis, and splits the current 9th Congressional District into three pieces. The legislature also passed bills allowing redistricting outside the usual once-a-decade cycle and set aside money to carry out the new map for the 2026 elections. The effect is immediate and concrete: voters in Memphis and Shelby County, long concentrated in one district, will now be dispersed across three seats.

The push has spread beyond Tennessee. In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey called lawmakers into special session to revisit the state’s congressional lines. In South Carolina, Republican leaders are considering a redraw that could put Rep. Jim Clyburn’s seat in play and, if adopted, turn a 6-1 Republican advantage into a 7-0 delegation. That would leave the state with no Democrat in the House and erase one of the South’s most durable Black political power centers.

Louisiana is preparing its own response. Lawmakers are drawing new congressional maps after the court’s ruling, and public hearings have drawn strong testimony from residents and elected officials who want to preserve two majority-Black districts. The fight centers on whether the state can still keep those districts without running afoul of the court’s new standard, or whether the ruling has left enough legal room for legislatures to break them apart.

Civil rights groups, the Congressional Black Caucus and Black lawmakers have cast the wave of redistricting as a major blow to Black representation and to the Voting Rights Act. NAACP President Derrick Johnson and Rep. Yvette D. Clarke have warned that the ruling and the maps that follow could weaken the political power Black voters built over decades. Republican leaders, by contrast, are defending the new maps as constitutional and political, setting up a wider battle over whether the court’s formal line on race now leaves minority voters with less protection on the ground.