Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s historic Voting Rights Act opinion and what’s next for the midterms

By Tierney Sneed, Fredreka Schouten, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday kicked yet another leg out from under the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 civil rights law that Chief Justice John Roberts’ court has repeatedly undermined over the years.

Wednesday’s opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito with the dissent from the court’s three liberals, will make it much harder for voters of color to challenge redistricting plans that allegedly dilute the political power of minority communities.

The ruling will bring about major changes to political representation at all levels of government in future elections, starting in earnest in 2028. Many states will either choose to make changes to legislative boundaries or be forced by courts to redraw districts that currently guarantee the ability of minority voters to elect the candidate of their choice.

State legislatures controlled by Republicans could opt to eliminate a slew of Democratic-held seats, particularly across the South, in an effort to cement the GOP’s hold on the US House.

However, the decision’s impact on the 2026 midterm elections could be limited given the practical and legal hurdles to redrawing legislative plans at this point in the electoral cycle.

In the case, which examined Louisiana’s congressional plan, the Supreme Court ruled that a map that had created a second majority-minority district in the state because of a Voting Rights Act challenge amounted to an unconstitutional use of race. The opinion had the effect of drastically changing a legal test the Supreme Court put forward 40 years ago for how courts should approach Voting Rights Act redistricting cases.

Alito played down how much he was reworking that test, but in a dissent joined by the court’s two other Democratic appointees, Justice Elena Kagan said “the Court’s decision will set back the foundational right Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.”

Here’s what to know about the historic ruling and what happens next:

GOP could see immediate benefits

Wednesday’s decision lands in an election season that already is underway, but it could set off an effort in several states to create new maps ahead of November’s midterm elections for Congress.

Republicans appear likely to benefit from the initial scramble.

Louisiana, the state at the center of the case, saw the high court strike down a map that created a Black-majority district now held by Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields.

Republican officials who control state government in Louisiana have not yet indicated how they will respond. But in a statement Wednesday, state Attorney General Liz Murrill said she would work with the state’s legislature and Gov. Jeff Landry on how to proceed with a “constitutionally compliant map” moving forward.

In a statement, Landry did not address whether the state would move to redraw lines.

Any redistricting action in Louisiana would disrupt the state’s May 16 primary. Early voting is slated to start Saturday, and overseas and military ballots already have gone out. Fields and other Democrats argued it already is too late draw new lines.

Alito’s opinion for the conservative majority returns the case to the lower court for more proceedings but without any instructions about whether the map should be withdrawn for the midterms.

His opinion also did not mention a legal doctrine known as Purcell, which says courts should avoid issuing rulings that would cause chaos and confusion for voters as an election is approaching.

Adam Kincaid, the president and executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, notes that Purcell is only a limitation on last-minute court action and should not constrain state lawmakers from moving forward.

“I think Louisiana very likely could do it,” he told CNN. “We’ll see if they do.”

Other states that have not kicked off voting in their primaries could also move quickly to draw lines. That includes Tennessee, which holds its primary August 6.

US Sen. Marsha Blackburn on Wednesday urged state lawmakers to draw another Republican seat in response to the court’s decision. That move would likely target the state’s sole Democrat in the House, Rep. Steve Cohen, who represents Memphis.

Florida effort gets a legal boost

In Florida, state lawmakers on Wednesday approved new congressional boundaries devised by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis that aims to help Republicans secure 24 of the state’s 28 US House seats this fall.

The high court’s ruling likely will strengthen DeSantis’ hand in defending that map against expected court challenges.

His legal team had cited the looming voting rights decision as one of its justifications for moving forward with mid-decade redistricting, and the high court’s ruling was quickly distributed electronically to members of the state Senate Wednesday as they prepared to vote on the boundaries.

Centers intentional discrimination

The Supreme Court’s ruling essentially means evidence of a discriminatory motive may be necessary to win Voting Rights Act-based challenges.

The decision cuts against 40 years of understanding that Congress wrote the VRA provision in question to push back not just on intentional racial discrimination, but on redistricting plans that had the effect of discrimination, even if intentional discrimination couldn’t be proven.

Alito wrote that VRA plaintiffs could only succeed “when the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.”

He claimed Wednesday that the court was stopping short of requiring a “finding of intentional discrimination.” But he significantly narrowed the kinds of evidence plaintiff can use to prove their cases, requiring a focus on “current” conditions.

Altogether, the ruling will make VRA redistricting cases “all but impossible to win,” said Omar Noureldin, senior vice president of the policy and litigation department of the voting rights group Common Cause.

Lawmakers don’t just say out loud that they are drawing maps for the purpose of diluting the political power of communities of color, Noureldin said, and legislative privileges often prevent plaintiffs from getting discovery that would show what map-drawers’ private intentions were.

Intentional discrimination cases are “much rarer than they used to be,” said Jason Torchinsky, an elections lawyer who has represented Republicans in redistricting fights, told CNN.

“You need some sort of smoking gun evidence,” said Torchinsky, who had represented Louisiana in the lower court proceedings in the current case. “You need an email where someone says ‘Yeah, I carved up the Hispanic neighborhood,’ and people don’t do that.”

Partisan gerrymanders as shield

The new ruling elevates the role partisan gerrymandering can play in warding off Voting Rights Act claims, coming on the heels of a 2019 Supreme Court ruling that said federal courts can play no role in policing partisan gerrymandering.

Alito’s new opinion – and a racial gerrymandering redistricting case the court handed down in 2024 – suggest that minority voters can only succeed in Voting Rights Act cases if they can propose maps that would protect whatever partisan advantage a legislature was seeking with its plan.

Alito said that to prevail in a Voting Rights Act case, plaintiffs will first have to show that it would be possible to draw the majority-minority district in a map that met all the other goals a legislature would have in drawing a plan – including a legislature’s goal of boosting one party over another. Secondly, Alito has said plaintiffs must show a minority group votes as a bloc in ways that are distinct from party affiliation.

In a two-party system, “racial divides often mirror the partisan divide,” said Hilary Harris Klein, a senior counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

“When these partisan objectives really amount to silencing Black and brown communities, the result is the same,” she said, accusing the Supreme Court of “allowing states to whitewash the dilution of minority voting strength.”

Roberts, Kavanaugh switch their views

In Wednesday’s decision, the Supreme Court essentially adopted arguments made by Alabama in a separate redistricting case decided three years ago — arguments that two court conservatives rejected then – but are siding with now.

Roberts — who wrote the 2023 opinion in Allen v. Milligan upholding a longstanding interpretation of the Voting Rights Act — didn’t write a concurrence in Wednesday’s Louisiana case to explain why he changed his views or how he squared the new redistricting ruling with the last one.

Neither did Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who joined Roberts and the three liberals in the Alabama case.

Roberts in 2023 upheld a legal test known as Gingles that the Supreme Court laid out for VRA redistricting cases in 1986.

It said that for voters to prevail in their challenge to redistricting plans, they must show that “the minority group must be sufficiently large and (geographically) compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district;” that the minority group is “cohesive” in its political views; and that White voters can vote as a bloc to defeat the minority group’s preferred candidate.

Now, in the Alito opinion in the Louisiana case that Roberts has signed on to, the bar plaintiffs must meet in VRA cases is much higher.

Earthquake for 2028 and beyond

While practical and legal obstacles will limit the effects of the ruling for 2026, it will likely render major changes for the legislative maps used in 2028 and will be extremely influential in the redistricting drawn after the 2030 census.

Republican-controlled states will be inclined to take a look at their current maps and consider redrafting any majority-minority districts they were forced to draw under the Voting Rights. Southern states like Georgia and South Carolina could see new maps before 2028, as could Ohio and states where tribal populations had forced the creation of VRA districts.

(In Georgia, Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson on Wednesday called on state lawmakers to add redistricting to an expected special session. The state’s primary election is fast approaching on May 19.)

Democratic states that were inclined to preserve their current plans may nonetheless face lawsuits arguing those plans violate Wednesday’s opinion in how race was used to draft them.

Illinois could be vulnerable to a lawsuit like that, according to Torchinsky. California’s plan may face legal challenge too, however, the way Wednesday’s ruling protects plans drawn for partisan reasons could protect it, as that was the goal of the recent initiative that redrew California’s congressional map.

Because of the Purcell doctrine, those lawsuits will not be able to force changes before the 2026 election. But they will need to be filed soon in order to be litigated in time for the 2028 election.

Democratic redistricting strategists have said they expect states controlled by their party – including New York, Colorado and Washington state – to attempt to mount counter-offenses in the coming years to draw maps that swing more US House seats to Democrats.

One Republican involved in redistricting efforts predicted Wednesday that 70 seats could be redrawn by the end of the 2028 election.

CNN’s Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.