Supreme Court Bans Racial Gerrymandering; Districts to Be Remade Colorblind

The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana v. Callais could be one of—if not the—deciding factor in who controls the House moving forward.The ruling is monumental because it struck down an interpretation of the Voting Rights Act that has, for decades now, forced southern states to draw up congressional maps in a way that maximizes the black vote.If you look at the congressional map, districts in these states have been drawn in strange ways because they’ve been forced by the courts to connect disparate pockets of black neighborhoods.However, this has just been ruled to be unconstitutional, and the states in question—many of whom actually have Republican state legislatures—are now free for the first time in decades to redraw their congressional maps without concern for the racial makeup of the people living there.The reason this truly matters is that the black vote is overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning. Meaning, the districts in question, the ones that are likely to get redrawn, could be flipped from blue-leaning to red-leaning.Let’s unpack this story in three steps: the legal framework that was in place for the past several decades, the Supreme Court’s new ruling, and then what this means moving forward—including which specific districts are likely to get amended.