Republicans didn’t hesitate to capitalize after the Supreme Court opened the door to exploit additional GOP House seats nationwide.
Within hours of the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling on Wednesday that nullified a landmark Civil Rights-era law restricting racial gerrymandering and racial discrimination in voting, GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn pounced on the opportunity to try to eliminate the only remaining Democratic district in her state of Tennessee.
“I urge our state legislature to reconvene to redistrict another Republican seat in Memphis. It’s essential to cement @realDonaldTrump’s agenda and the Golden Age of America,” Blackburn, 73, wrote on X.
“I’ve vowed to keep Tennessee a red state,” Blackburn, who is running in the state’s 2028 gubernatorial race, added, “and as Governor, I’ll do everything I can to make this map a reality.”
The state’s current House map already favors Republicans 8-1, with District 9 remaining the only Democratic holdout. Thanks to a longstanding interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, Tennessee’s ninth district, which includes Memphis, has primarily been preserved as a Black-majority district.
Florida’s MAGA Gov. Ron DeSantis had already planned for the court’s ruling with a prepared congressional map that would add four more Republican seats to the state. The state’s legislature passed the measure hours after Wednesday’s ruling.
President Donald Trump pushed his GOP lawmakers to redraw more favorable districts in states such as Texas, Virginia, and Florida, in efforts to protect against his potential impeachment if Democrats retake the House in November midterm elections.
In a 6-3 decision based on partisan lines, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map that was redrawn after lower courts found the state’s original post-2020 census map likely thinned Black voting power.
Despite Black residents making up roughly a third of the state’s population, state lawmakers had initially created only one majority-Black district out of six, which was changed to two after the redraw.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito argued in the majority opinion that Louisiana’s new map was an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander,” saying that while there may be extreme cases where race can be considered in drawing a map, that was not so for Louisiana.
The ruling, which centered on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act—one of the only remaining provisions that had not yet been stripped by the Supreme Court—included a fierce dissent from its liberal minority, with Justice Elena Kagan describing it as the “latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition” of the Act.
“I dissent because Congress elected otherwise. I dissent because the court betrays its duty to faithfully implement the great statute Congress wrote,” Kagan, 66, wrote. “I dissent because the court’s decision will set back the foundational right of Congress granted of racial equality in electoral opportunity.”
The ruling effectively neuters Section 2 of the Act without striking it down, now requiring proof of intentional discrimination—which would be difficult for plaintiffs to prove in court.
