Supreme Court Voting Rights Act Ruling Sparks Concerns Over Black Congressional Representation

A historic drop in representation by Black members of Congress may be on the way after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision Wednesday to further weaken the Voting Rights Act.

Now that the high court's conservative majority has reinterpreted longstanding provisions against racial discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Republican calls for new rounds of map drawing for the House of Representatives have already begun.

How much of that redistricting can be done in time for this fall's midterm election is unclear, although many states have held or are close to holding congressional primary races.

But in the long run, looking beyond this November, many redistricting experts are expecting Republican-controlled state legislatures in the South to eliminate at least some House districts with sizable racial minority populations currently represented by Black Democrats and that were likely protected under the Supreme Court's previous interpretation of Section 2 provisions.

From Louisiana and eastward to North Carolina, there are at least 15 House districts now at risk of elimination, according to an NPR analysis conducted earlier this year. That list grows longer if taking into account newly redrawn districts in Missouri and Texas, which were not included in the analysis.

Exactly how redistricting will play out with an eroded Voting Rights Act is hard to predict. Some Democratic-led states may jump into the fray and consider undoing certain majority-minority districts to spread out their voters and try to pick up additional seats.

And some GOP-led states may decide to keep some of those districts for partisan reasons, as they can keep large numbers of Democratic-leaning voters packed within those lines.

Losing even a handful of those districts, however, could set up the largest-ever decline in the number of Black representatives on Capitol Hill — breaking a record set around the end of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era by the Congress that began in 1877 with four fewer House districts represented by Black lawmakers than the previous session.

Black-represented districts were in the single digits or at zero for a century after the Civil War. But since the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that number has grown to 63 districts, making up around 14% of the House.

The potential drop in that figure drew a swift rebuke Wednesday from members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

"With this decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court has opened the door to a coordinated attack on Black voters across this country," Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, chair of the caucus, said during a press conference hours after the court released its decision. "This is an outright power grab. It's about silencing Black voices, dismantling majority Black districts and rigging the maps so that politicians can choose their voters instead of the other way around."

As part of its reinterpretation of the Voting Rights Act, the court's conservative majority ruled that a Louisiana congressional district crafted to comply with Section 2 was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, and that Section 2 should focus on intentional racial discrimination.

Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama who has led what has been an uphill push to shore up and expand the Voting Rights Act, said she plans to revise her bill again to "reflect the court cases that have tried to gut" the landmark law.

"Listen, we cannot give up," Sewell said. "We're not going to give up."

In the meantime, however, Atiba Ellis, a law professor and associate dean at Case Western Reserve University, sees the ongoing partisan gerrymandering war between Republicans and Democrats only getting worse with a further weakened Voting Rights Act.

"This could distort politics in Washington substantially by preventing communities of color from genuinely being heard," Ellis says. "I think it highly ironic that under the guise of a colorblind Constitution communities of color in a diversifying America could lose the lion's share of their voice in government."