After the Supreme Court appeared ready to dismantle one of the remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act, Democrats and Republicans began to reckon with a political future that could see the balance of power in Congress tip decisively toward the G.O.P. and lead to further entrenchment and polarization in states across the country.
For 60 years, the Voting Rights Act has been a singular force in American politics. Despite recent court cases that have weakened the law, it is still one of the most influential regulations shaping congressional and state legislative maps, expanding representation and voter participation in minority communities.
Courts have required states to draw congressional districts that allow minority voters to elect the candidates of their choice, often leading to majority-minority districts that have favored Democrats.
But on Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case testing whether incorporating race in redistricting, as protected by the Voting Rights Act, runs afoul of the Constitution. In their questioning, a majority of the justices appeared poised to rule that lawmakers cannot consider race, or to sharply limit their ability to do so.
If the justices gut a key provision of the law, there could be a potential windfall for Republicans in Congress. An analysis by The New York Times estimated that the loss of those protections, found in Section 2 of the law, could open the way for redistricting that could net Republicans as many as a dozen seats. A study by two left-leaning voting rights groups — Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matters Fund — set the potential Republican gains at 19 seats. Either result could place the House in Republican control for a generation.
After the oral arguments concluded on Wednesday, Republicans kept their public comments to a minimum. The National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican National Committee declined to weigh in on the political possibilities of a weakened Voting Rights Act, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
But for Democrats, the tone of the oral arguments was met with a mix of panic, resolve, alarm and resignation, particularly amid an already contentious mid-decade redistricting fight. President Trump has been pressuring Republican-controlled states across the country to redraw their maps ahead of the 2026 midterms to create more safe seats for Republicans and to maintain control of Congress. But they have been confined in part by the Voting Rights Act, particularly in the South.
“Republicans are already targeting the voting power of communities of color in their craven redistricting schemes, and if the Supreme Court sides with Donald Trump, it would be a major, generational step back in our fight for racial justice and fair representation,” Ken Martin, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement.
Neither party, however, was willing to engage in speculation about how many seats could be gained or lost in Congress. “No matter how the court rules, we intend to take back the majority in 2026,” Mr. Martin added.
Representative Yvette Clarke, Democrat of New York and the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that minority caucuses like hers and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus could end up losing members, and that the loss of their voices in Congress could lead to significant policy shifts in areas like fair housing and voting rights.
“It’s targeting those communities that, through the Voting Rights Act, were able to elect individuals that was more reflective of their lived experiences,” Ms. Clarke said.
She added: “We stand to lose many, many seats.”
Beyond the calculus of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives, some Democrats expressed alarm at the other potential consequences of the vacuum that could be left by gutting the Voting Rights Act. Without federal guardrails, states would be free to maximize one party’s hold over an area, removing region-to-region variation and locking in single-party power statewide.
“You’re opening the door to creating a U.S. House of Representatives that more mimics the Senate and does not represent the people, but actually represents chunks of population that specifically have power,” said John Bisognano, the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. “We’re talking about a massive political realignment of the way Americans are represented.”
A potential decimation of the Voting Rights Act has Democrats contemplating a rapidly intensifying redistricting arms race, in which each party races to win a trifecta in a state — meaning complete control of both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion — in order to draw new maps unbound by federal laws and create permanent majorities and minorities.
For much of the last few decades, Democrats have been outgunned at the state legislative level, and have only recently begun to draw significant donor and voter attention to the downballot elections that determine so much of the national political climate. Republicans currently have a trifecta in 23 states. Democrats have one in only 15.
“We’ll see more mid-decade redistricting, brinkmanship and laws that most of us had thought had gotten the way of the dodo in an ever more unstable and politicized environment,” said Daniel Squadron, a former Democratic state senator from New York and co-founder of the States Project, a Democratic group focused on state legislatures. “Having 50 states each unbound in the districts they can draw and the laws they can pass is going to further drive states away from each other.”
Officials from both parties, however, cautioned that even without the protections from the Voting Rights Act, there were local realities — state laws, local politics and geographic limitations — that would shape any future redistricting plans.
Current incumbents, for example, are often not thrilled about having to adjust to new districts, and the wholesale redrawing of maps could create an uproar among elected officials in a state. Indeed, in the Louisiana map that prompted the case before the Supreme Court, Republicans in the state took pains to protect the districts of Speaker Mike Johnson and Representative Steve Scalise.
If they were to redraw the maps in Louisiana to try to eliminate Democratic districts, some Republicans, including Mr. Johnson, may have to face a more competitive election.
“There are political considerations in every state,” said Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, which helps coordinate the party’s redistricting strategy. “This is all really hard to forecast.”
Nick Corasaniti is a Times reporter covering national politics, with a focus on voting and elections.
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