Month: June 2026

Options After Callais

Posted on by Stand Up for Workers Action

What are the options for dealing with Callais’ decimation of Sec. 2 of the Voting Rights Act and Rucho’s determination that partisan redistricting claims are not justiciable in the federal courts?

Callais is already leading to the destruction of Black-majority congressional districts and to the destruction of any hope for a multi-racial democracy, especially in the South. Rucho has led to a battle to the bottom, in which state legislatures have begun redistricting congressional districts to the benefit of the majority party in those states’ legislatures.

There are three principal responses: federal anti-gerrymandering legislation, state anti-legislation, and proportional representation.

Federal Anti-Gerrymandering Legislation

Congress has the power, pursuant to Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution, to enact laws governing the time, place, and manner of elections for Members of the House of Representatives. Democrats have repeatedly introduced bills in Congress that would prohibit states from engaging in partisan gerrymandering or redistricting and from redistricting congressional districts in mid-decade. The current bills are S. 2885 and H.R. 5449.

Those bills would prohibit any state from using “a redistricting plan to conduct an election that, when considered on a statewide basis, has been drawn with the intent or has the effect of materially favoring or disfavoring any political party.” They would establish criteria for deciding whether a districting plan was adopted for partisan reasons, would establish a private right of action with three-judge panels and a right to appeal to the D.C. Circuit, and would require each state to establish independent, non- partisan redistricting commissions.

The House passed, in 2022, the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, which contained prohibitions against partisan congressional redistricting. But the bill died in the Senate because of a Republican filibuster.

Right now, the bills prohibiting partisan redistricting would meet a similar fate, and would be vetoed by Pres. Trump if the Senate amended the filibuster rules to let them pass. Republicans now believe that partisan redistricting is in their partisan best interests.

It is possible that Democrats in states with legislatures controlled by their party will be able to create enough new Democratic congressional seats to cancel out the new Republican congressional seats created by Republican state legislators. Only if the two parties realize that they are evenly disadvantaged by partisan redistricting will congressional Republicans probably agree to sponsor these bills.

State Anti-Gerrymandering Legislation

A number of states require redistricting to be done by independent commissions, provided that partisan redistricting claims are justiciable in those states’ courts, or otherwise prohibit or limit partisan redistricting. Florida, for example, has state constitutional provisions prohibiting maps “drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.”

Those provisions did not stop Florida Gov. DeSantis and the Republican- controlled state legislature from adopting new maps that, if adopted, would net 4 new seats for Republicans. A circuit court judge, on May 26, 2026, refused to issue a preliminary injunction because he concluded there was “insufficient evidence of impermissible intent.” That judge would have accepted the legislature’s denial that Donald Duck is a duck.

Proportional Representation

Another approach would be to abandon gerrymandering altogether, by providing for proportional representation on a state-wide basis. For example, assume that a state has 10 congressional districts and that Party A won 60% of the congressional vote state-wide, while Party B won 40% of the vote. In a proportional system, six of the state’s districts would be represented by politicians affiliated with Party A, and 40% by representatives from Party B.

In that system, the districts with the highest votes for Party A would have representatives from that party. That would eliminate the worst inequities of partisan gerrymandering. People would no longer see their votes wasted because of the drawing of district boundaries. That would incentivize each political party and each party’s voters to vote, regardless of the way the boundaries are drawn.

However, there is a real possibility that a proportional-representation scheme in a state with a large number of congressional districts, such as California or Texas, could be won by minor parties, which could further fracture the political system. Overall, however, this kind of scheme would reduce extreme partisanship and eliminate the current race to the bottom of racial gerrymandering.

Written By Barry Roseman, SU4W Board Member

The Fifteenth Amendment and Callais

Posted on by Stand Up for Workers Action

I wrote an article in the May issue of the Stand Up For Workers newsletter about the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais. I only briefly mentioned the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S Constitution in that piece.

The Callais majority decision effectively determined that Sec. 2 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, while claiming that it was merely “updat[ing]” the framework for determining whether Sec. 2 has been violated. That was a cynical exercise of the conservative majority’s power. The majority opinion would have been more intellectually honest if it had said what it was doing. The claim that it was just updating the Sec. 2 framework fooled no one.

Sec. 2 was enacted pursuant to both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits the states from “deny[ing] or abridg[ing]” the “right of citizens of the United States to vote” because of their “race.” In fact, the Fifteenth Amendment is the only provision in the Constitution that expressly prohibits racial discrimination.

Southern states diluted Black citizens’ votes by gerrymandering congressional districts as early as the 1870s. The Supreme Court in 1980 rejected a claim of racial dilution pursuant to Sec. 2 because the plaintiffs had not proven that the dilution scheme was done for a racial reason. Congress rejected that interpretation of Sec. 2.

In its 1982 amendments to the VRA, it expressly supported racial-dilution claims and provided that it is not necessary to prove discriminatory intent to prevail on such claims. Congress had the power to adopt the amended Sec. 2 pursuant to the Fifteenth Amendment, which grants Congress the “power to enforce this [amendment] by appropriate legislation.” The Supreme Court, in 1966, decided that “Congress may use any rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition of racial discrimination in voting.” The Callais majority concluded that that Fifteenth Amendment power is limited to efforts to end intentional racial discrimination in voting. The majority reasoned that redistricting for partisan reasons does not violate Sec. 2. But voting by Black voters in the South is highly partisan now, as it was in the 1870s and 1880s. Partisan redistricting is racial redistricting, especially in the South, where almost all Black individuals and relatively few white people vote for Democrats. Congress amended Sec. 2 because Southern state legislatures solemnly stated that they had no racial animus is drawing district lines.

That is nonsense. Of course they did, since they knew the penalties of being honest about their intent.

State legislatures are populated and advised by lawyers. State legislators are acutely aware of the importance of legislative district boundaries. They know where the district boundaries are located and know that Black voters in the South overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

The drawing of district boundaries is an intentional act. Sec. 2 was amended because evidence of racial results is evidence of racial intent. It is not necessary to find direct evidence of racial intent, since that intent is inferred from legislatures’ intentional decisions to create districts that result in racial discrimination.

Callais is written from the perspective of the white majority legal and political system in this country. Black citizens in the South – with the apparent exception of Justice Thomas – understand that racial discrimination is alive and well in their state legislatures. The Voting Rights Act was adopted to end that discrimination. As a result of Callais, that discrimination is alive and well.

It is ironic that as this country celebrates the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the aftermath of the peculiar institution of slavery continues to rear its ugly head in the heart of this democracy. The Callais decision will destroy Black representation in most of the South, until and unless it is overturned or until Congress abolishes partisan gerrymandering or requires proportional representation for congressional districts.

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On June 2, 2026, by a vote of 6-3, a majority of the Supreme Court granted a motion for stay in Allen v. Milligan, after a three-judge panel in the Southern District of Alabama concluded that the Alabama state legislature had intentionally discriminated on the basis of race in creating a legislative map that included only one Black-majority congressional district.

The Supreme Court decided in the same case in 2023 that Alabama’s congressional map unlawfully discriminated on the basis of race against Black residents of that state. The district court then held an 11-day trial in which 51 witnesses testified and almost 800 exhibits were exhibited into evidence. The district court concluded that the legislature acted with a discriminatory purpose and not for partisan reasons. The Supreme Court ignored that clear evidentiary record in allowing Alabama to hold an election with only one Black-majority district this year.

Written by Barry Roseman, SU4W Board Member