Chicago – April 30, 2026
The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday handed Republicans their biggest victory yet in the perpetual battle to control the House of Representatives and statehouses across the country — but it may have come too late to have much of an effect on this year’s midterm elections.
The 6-3 ruling effectively gutted the Voting Rights Act’s requirement that districts be drawn to give minority voters a chance to elect representatives of their choosing. One practical effect of that requirement was the protection of reliably Democratic-voting majority-minority districts, even in solidly red states where lawmakers could otherwise favor the GOP.
With that mandate now largely gone, Republican lawmakers across the country — and especially in the South — have a freer hand to eliminate Democratic-leaning districts and pad the total number of seats they can win to hold the U.S. House. There are more than a dozen such seats in Republican-controlled states.
Shortly after the ruling, Republicans were urging a review of their congressional maps in Louisiana, Tennessee and elsewhere.
Their immediate challenge is that the ruling came down well after filing deadlines for this year’s primary elections — and in some cases, after those primary elections have been held. That means ballots are set and in some states early and absentee voting has already begun.
