One of the more revealing reactions to the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais is just how completely Democrats seem to have misunderstood it. They treat the decision as an assault on the Voting Rights Act, even going so far as to say it “eviscerates” it. In doing so, they are lamenting the potential loss of a system that has, quietly and consistently, worked against their own electoral interests for decades.
For years, Democrats have embraced race-based districting that produces overwhelming supermajority Black districts, that are sometimes 80 or even 90 percent Democratic, where the Republican Party does not meaningfully compete. They are basically invincible, and that’s the point: a Black Democrat is guaranteed to win, and on its face, this looks like strength. The problem is that winning a district 90–10 is no better than winning it 51–49, except that in the former case you have effectively wasted nearly half your voters winning an election by more than you needed. Those are voters who could have influenced neighboring districts, but instead are concentrated into one seat that was never in doubt. The result is a map that guarantees a handful of Democratic victories while making the surrounding districts far more hospitable to Republicans.
This is not my opinion or a theory. It is arithmetic.
The history of the House of Representatives reflects it. Remarkably few American seem to remember that Democrats controlled the House for roughly forty years, from the 1950s through 1994. They held it through the presidencies of Nixon and Reagan — both of whom won forty-nine states in their respective reelection campaigns — and through the presidency of George H. W. Bush. This was the height of conservativism, and the Democrats went undefeated through twenty straight elections! But then came the early 1990s, and along with it a push for majority-minority districts intensified, with Republicans quietly leaning into the movement. They understood then what still eludes Democrats today: that those hyper-majority districts undoubtedly increased Black representation in Congress, which is no small thing, but they also concentrated Democratic voters into fewer, safer seats, making it easier for Republicans to win the rest.
Republicans were not blind to this. By supporting the creation of heavily concentrated districts, they simultaneously increased minority representation and improve their own electoral map. It was a tradeoff Democrats accepted, whether consciously or not: certainty in a few heavily minority districts in exchange for diminished competitiveness across many others.
Against that backdrop, the Court’s decision in Callais is being read far too narrowly. The Court is not simply weakening the Voting Rights Act. It is saying that the Act does not give states a free pass to sort voters explicitly by race in order to engineer outcomes. If that means voters are less tightly packed and more evenly distributed across districts, then many of those previously “wasted” votes will begin to matter again in competitive elections. The irony is difficult to miss: the decision Democrats fear may well place them in a stronger electoral position.
But I think there’s a more cynical explanation for their consternation. The real fear for Democrats may not be that the party loses seats, or even that there are fewer Black members of Congress. It may be that many comfortable white Democratic incumbents suddenly find their districts changed by an influx of Black Democratic voters who quite reasonably begin asking why they should keep sending the same familiar faces back to Washington. If these voters are no longer packed into a handful of safe districts, they do not simply disappear. They become politically relevant somewhere else, and relevance has consequences.
For the Supreme Court, there is an deeper tension here, one that should give both sides pause. In our most recent essay, we noted that in the earlier case of Rucho v. Common Cause, the Court held that partisan gerrymandering claims are nonjusticiable. In plain terms, the conservatives on the Court decided that even extreme partisan map-drawing is a political problem the federal courts will not solve. There is no clear, manageable standard for determining when partisanship goes “too far,” and so the judiciary steps aside.
But in Callais, the same conservative wing of the Court steps in, on the ground that race-based districting violates the Equal Protection Clause. So the Court in Rucho held that the federal judiciary will not interfere with political gerrymandering, but Callais said it will interfere in racial gerrymandering. Why this distinction exists at all is questionable, and it is far less stable than the Court would like to admit.
Race and party are deeply correlated in modern American politics, particularly in the South and in urban areas. To say that courts will not police partisan gerrymandering but will police racial gerrymandering is, in many cases, to pretend that the label matters more than the substance. A legislature that wishes to achieve a racially predictable outcome can often do so under the banner of partisan advantage. The same map may be described, depending on one’s purposes, as either partisan or racial. The Court’s doctrine assumes a clarity that the real world does not provide.
This is not to say the Court is wrong as a matter of constitutional law, only that it cannot hold two directly opposite positions simultaneously, separated only by a distinction without meaningful difference. The Court’s attempt to draw a bright line between race and party may be more formal than functional. It risks forbidding the explicit use of race while permitting outcomes that are, in effect, indistinguishable.
Which brings us back to the political reaction. Democrats are condemning Callais as though it were a straightforward loss. It may not be. By limiting the ability to create overwhelmingly concentrated districts, the decision may force a redistribution of voters that increases competitiveness and, in some cases, Democratic seat share. The system they are defending — one that prioritizes certainty in a few districts — has often come at the expense of broader political power.
At the same time, conservatives should be cautious about celebrating too loudly. A jurisprudence that refuses to confront partisan gerrymandering while aggressively policing racial gerrymandering rests on a distinction that is increasingly difficult to maintain. If the Court is serious about the principle that voters should not be sorted into political categories by the state, it may eventually have to grapple with the broader problem it set aside in Rucho.
For now, however, the immediate irony remains: in rushing to denounce the decision, Democrats may be defending a system that has been quietly undermining their own electoral success—and overlooking the possibility that the Court has just disrupted it.
