The Supreme Court killed voting rights and escalated the gerrymandering wars. Here’s what Congress needs to do in response

The racial gerrymandering free-for-all is now on. The only real solution is proportional representation.

Thomas Nast, Harpers Weekly, Dec 23, 1876 (the end of Reconstruction)

It has been forty-eight hours since the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. And, as anticipated, the gerrymandering wars have already escalated like a race to the bottom where six robed justices just dropped a brick through the floor and excavated a black hole.

For those just catching up, here’s what the Court did in Callais: In a 6-3 ruling, Justice Alito held that creating majority-minority districts to comply with the Voting Rights Act is itself an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Court said racial gerrymandering is fine, as long as nobody stands at a dais and proclaims “we are intentionally trying to elect more white people to Congress.” And partisan gerrymandering has been perfectly legal since Rucho v. Common Cause in 2019.

So, the green light to maximum gerrymandering warfare is now on. But it’s an unwinnable war. It can’t go on forever. Or can it?

I’m not sure. But there is, as it happens, an obvious solution. It’s called proportional representation. More on that at the end of this piece, though if you’re a regular reader of this substack you’ll probably know a thing or two about it.

But first, let’s check in on the post-Callais scoreboard. It’s already gone holy bananas. Start with Louisiana, the state at the center of the VRA case the Court just decided. Currently six House seats. Two held by Black Democrats, four by white Republicans. The decision came down Wednesday morning. That afternoon, Republican Governor Jeff Landry suspended the May 16 primary so the legislature could redraw the maps. Analysts expect a 5-1 Republican delegation; a 6-0 shutout is possible.

Over to Mississippi. Four seats, currently 3-1 Republican. Governor Tate Reeves had already called a special sessionbefore Callais, officially about judicial maps, but Republican state legislators immediately signaled they’d target Bennie Thompson’s congressional district too. Thompson, the state’s lone Black congressman, has held his majority-Black district since 1993. If Republicans move on congressional maps (and everything suggests they will), analysts expect a 4-0 shutout.

And east onto Alabama. Seven seats, currently 5-2 Republican after courts forced the creation of a second majority-Black district in 2023. Black Democrat Terri Sewell, who has held her seat since 2011, called the ruling “a death sentence” for the Voting Rights Act. Republican Rep. Barry Moore called on the legislature to “begin the process of redistricting” the same morning. Governor Kay Ivey declined to call a special session, citing a federal court order through 2030. That order was issued under the legal framework Callais just demolished. Alabama’s Attorney General has since filed emergency motions at the Supreme Court to lift it.

And then on to Florida. Twenty-eight seats, previously 20-8 Republican. Governor Ron DeSantis had his new map ready before the opinion hit the docket. The legislature passed it the same day, projecting a 24-4 Republican delegation. DeSantis’ election lawyer argued Callais nullifies the state’s Fair Districts Amendments entirely.

North to Georgia: Republican Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones pledged to “fully support redrawing” the state’s maps, putting all five majority-Black Democratic seats in play.

And onto South Carolina. Republican Representative Ralph Norman called for redrawing Democrat Jim Clyburn’s district, celebrating that “districts that were designed to be untouchable” can finally be targeted.

In Tennessee, Senator Marsha Blackburn, running for governor, called on the legislature to reconvene and eliminate the majority-Black district in Memphis: “I’ve vowed to keep Tennessee a red state.”

In Texas, Governor Abbott is signaling another round of redistricting on top of the Trump-pushed mid-decade gerrymander already in place.

By the count of Black Voters Matter Fund and Fair Fight Action, Republican-controlled legislatures across the South could now target as many as 19 majority-minority districts, all currently held by Democrats. The 2026 calendar limits how many can move this cycle. The 2028 calendar does not.

The Democrats respond with “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.” Could California now go 52-0 Democrats?

Before Callais, Democrats thought they were winning the redistricting wars. Virginia voters approved a new map on April 21, shifting the delegation from 6-5 to 10-1 Democratic, though the map is in legal limbo after a circuit court blocked certification. California’s Proposition 50 passed in November, giving Democrats five more seats. Between Virginia, California, and a court-ordered map in Utah, Democrats appeared to have matched the Republican gains from Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio. Redistricting was a wash.

Callais poured hot volcanic ash on the wash.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told POLITICO on Thursday that he’s now targeting New York, Illinois, Maryland, and Colorado for new maps before 2028. His framing: “Republicans have concluded that they need to cheat to win, and the Supreme Court conservatives have decided to aid and abet their scheme. Democrats are going to fight back with every tool available.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul: “I’m working with the Legislature to fight back.” Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker: “We have options.” Maryland Governor Wes Moore: “Until we have national redistricting reform, every state should stay part of the conversation.” California Governor Gavin Newsom: “We cannot unilaterally disarm.”

But notice what Jeffries could not say. Asked directly by POLITICO whether blue states should split majority-minority districts to draw more Democratic seats overall, Jeffries dodged. He has to. When Illinois Democrats tried to redraw their maps last year, the effort stalled in part because Black state lawmakers resisted diluting their own representation. Republicans can dismantle minority districts with zero intraparty cost. Democrats cannot retaliate without destroying the representation of their most loyal voters. The pressure to try is already coming from inside the caucus: Terri Sewell, the Alabama Democrat whose own district is about to be erased, told the New York Times: “I’d take 52 seats from California. I sure would — and 17 seats from Illinois.”

Add it all up, and Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard election law professor, warns that the reduction in minority representation could be the largest since Reconstruction. This is, of course, exactly what Charles, Fuentes-Rohwer, Latner, and Algara predicted in their Yale Law Journal Forum piece in February: “a retaliatory war of all against all.”

Doomier and loopier we go. Whee.

At a certain point, you wonder why even bother to have November elections anymore. If every district is mapped to be safe for one party or the other, it would certainly save money and time just to let the state legislature appoint the congressional delegation.

Democrats promise to re-litigate the last war with the same losing plan. Meanwhile, the terrain has changed dramatically.

The decision was not hard to anticipate. The Court telegraphed it when it ordered re-argument in Callais last summer with the explicit question of whether Section 2 is constitutional. Democrats had time to prepare. And yet Democrats responded with the same proposals they’ve been touting for a decade. They are promising to fight the last war. Or maybe the one before that. So many wars, these days. Who can keep track?

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pledged to “reverse this awful decision.” With what? Democrats have tried. Schumer brought the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act to the floor in 2021; These were important bills that I supported enthusiastically. But neither cleared a Republican filibuster.

But Callais has now changed the landscape. Even if the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act passed now, the same 6-3 Court majority would strike it down on the same Fourteenth Amendment grounds. Schumer’s call to keep fighting fire with the ashes of 2021 is the current Democratic line, echoed throughout the party.

Then there is the familiar litigation hammer. Marc Elias, founder of Democracy Docket and the Democratic Party’s most prominent election lawyer, filed suit challenging DeSantis’s redistricting authority in Florida. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund pledged to keep fighting. Common Cause is filing new suits even as its own senior vice president, Omar Noureldin, concedes that VRA redistricting cases are now “all but impossible to win.” The battlefield is different but the reflexes are the same.

The Roberts Court has spent seven years closing every door: Rucho (2019) blocked partisan gerrymandering claims, Brnovich (2021) narrowed voter access claims, Callais (2026) killed race-conscious remedies. What remains is intentional discrimination claims, which now require a smoking bazooka emblazoned with KKK iconography.

Litigation may buy time. It is not a solution.

And what about a national ban on gerrymandering? Nobody has ever agreed on a standard to define gerrymandering.That’s the problem with any promise of “fair maps” or national independent redistricting commissions. Commissions require a standard of fairness, and nobody has ever agreed on one. Partisan fairness and competition pull in opposite directions. And even a perfect commission still draws single-member districts, which still produce two parties, which still produce the zero-sum mindset we’re watching destroy our democracy in real time.

Every one of these reflexive responses from Democrats accepts the single-member-district framework that is producing the crisis.

But here’s the harder thing to ask: what if the single-member-district system was never good for minority voters? Majority-minority districts only work when minority communities are geographically segregated enough to form a majority in a single district. The remedy depends on segregation as a precondition for representation. As I’ve argued in the NYU Law Review (mostly just trying to build on and update the work of Lani Guinier, the OG of the “proportional representation is better for minority representation” argument) majority-minority districts were always at best a patch, not a solution. Callais ripped the patch off. As Charles, Fuentes-Rohwer, Latner, and Algara put it in their Yale Law Journal Forum piece: we are now left with just “The two primary options.” They are: “unfettered majoritarianism or proportional power sharing.” So far, we have chosen the first. The second is the only sustainable democratic choice.

In the 24 hours after Callais, one member of Congress named the structural solution.

Representative Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, the committee that would actually mark up the bill, said this on the day of the decision: “I call for Congress to authorize multi-member congressional districts with proportional representation systems to prevent partisan shut-outs and drown-outs across the country.”

He’s right. Here’s why.

One weird trick to end the gerrymandering wars and restore fair representation for minorities

Go back to Louisiana. Six seats. One-third Black. Four years of litigation to create a second majority-Black district. The Supreme Court just struck it down. Now imagine a system of proportional representation.

Here’s how it works. Instead of dividing a state into single-member districts where the winner takes all, you elect the whole delegation at once, proportionally. Parties present lists of candidates. Voters choose from those lists. Votes for all a party’s candidates tally up. If Party A’s list gets 40% of the votes in a five-seat district, it gets two seats, awarded to its two most popular candidates. Seats are awarded in direct proportion to the share of the votes.

Apply that to Louisiana: 33% of six seats is two. Black voters, voting cohesively, elect two representatives of choice. No district lines to draw. No litigation required.

Now compare that to what happens under single-member districts. 51% beats 49% and the 51% wins the seat. The other 49% gets nothing. No voice, no seat at the table. Completely disproportional. In a six-member proportional district, by contrast, 51% gets three seats and 49% gets three seats. Everybody gets represented. In close proportion to their vote share.

That’s why PR makes gerrymandering pointless: you can’t pack and crack voters when every district elects multiple winners in proportion to the vote. And in larger states, even if you drew district lines, minorities get representation in proportion to their support, instead of nothing.

The larger the district, the more proportional the outcome. At three members you get modest proportionality. At five you get solid proportionality. States with at least five seats account for 89% of the House. States with at least three account for 96%.

And most importantly for minority representation, proportional representation doesn’t require anybody to take race into account. Harvard Law professor Nick Stephanopoulos, writing the day of the decision, makes the doctrinal case directly: “PR is inherently race-neutral; in some forms, it doesn’t even require districts, and it always operates without any reference to race. PR also usually leads to greater representation for minority voters than do single-member districts. So in one stroke, PR could do a better job fighting racial vote dilution than Section 2 ever did, and do so without triggering equal protection objections.”

Similarly, as Charles, Fuentes-Rohwer, Latner, and Algara argue in the Yale Law Journal, a proportional system “sidesteps the Court’s constitutional objections by minimizing the state’s role in dividing voters by race. Instead, it grants voters, specifically voters of color, the agency to aggregate themselves according to whatever identities they find salient — racial, political, or otherwise.”

I also noted in my NYU Law Review piece that democracies that use proportional representation consistently outperform majoritarian systems at managing racial and ethnic diversity.

PR doesn’t require a constitutional amendment. It doesn’t require this Court’s cooperation or permission. It requires Congress to amend the 1967 Uniform Congressional District Act, a one-paragraph statute that mandates single-member districts.

But PR doesn’t just end the gerrymandering wars and offer a race-neutral solution to fair racial representation. Wait ... there’s more!

It also breaks the two-party doom loop that’s driving our insane political death spiral. Single-member districts mathematically produce two parties. Two parties produce zero-sum competition. Zero-sum competition in a diverse society predictably collapses into an identity war where the other side isn’t an opponent but an enemy, where every election feels existential, and where “maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time” (a phrase that Hakeem Jeffries has been using a lot lately) starts to sound like strategy. Interestingly, Jeffries borrowed that phrase verbatim from a Trump ally who coined it in a New York Times story last August describing the Texas gerrymander.

Multiple parties can win seats. Coalition-building replaces zero-sum warfare. Cross-cutting alliances become possible. Coalitions can shift. The stakes of any single election drop. The healthy competition of democracy can return. No party has a monopoly on opposition.

For Senate races, governorships, and other single-winner elections where PR can’t apply, fusion voting is the complement. By letting new parties cross-endorse candidates, fusion breaks the binary without splitting the vote, giving voters more choices and candidates more incentives to build coalitions across party lines.

Electoral reform is not a panacea or a silver bullet for everything that challenges our democracy. Nothing is. Democracy is not a system to be fixed. It is a system to allow us to work out our differences peacefully.

So could reform really happen?

The gerrymandering wars have no permanent victory. There is no stable endpoint. There is only escalation and democratic destruction along the way. It is trench warfare when the trenches only get deeper.

Americans are sick and tired of the same two parties fighting the same endless trench warfare. A majority of Americans already say they want more than two parties. A majority of Americans say they want major change.

There is a tremendous opportunity here for the leader who seizes the moment.

America will get proportional representation one day. And sometime far in the future, we will look back and think: why did it take us so long?

Now let’s go make that history happen, sooner rather than never.