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April 29, 2026, 2:54 p.m. ET
Live Updates: Supreme Court Further Weakens Voting Rights Act
The court’s conservative majority said they had upheld the landmark law, as liberal justices accused them of gutting it. In striking down a Louisiana voting map as a racial gerrymander, the court opened the door for other states to redraw their maps.
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A series of rulings by the justices has weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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Eric Lee for The New York Times
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April 29, 2026, 1:56 p.m. ET
Abbie VanSickle
Nicholas Corasaniti
and
Emily Cochrane
Here’s the latest.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a voting map in Louisiana, and with it dealt a blow to a landmark civil rights law and opened the door for other states to redraw their congressional maps in ways that could affect elections for years to come.
It is unclear how the decision, which split 6-3 along ideological lines, will impact November’s midterm elections amid redistricting battles that have blazed in multiple states, but several
are moving to draw new congressional maps in time
. The decision is likely to create new Republican districts across the South for future elections, for the presidential election in 2028 and beyond.
The court’s decision was 6-to-3, split along ideological lines. In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that the court had kept intact the Voting Rights Act but that Louisiana’s new majority-minority district violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
The conservative majority asserted that the
opinion
was a limited ruling that preserved a central tenet of the Voting Rights Act, but the court’s liberal wing, in dissent, argued that the justices had taken the final step to dismantle the landmark civil rights law.
Here’s what else to know:
The opinion:
Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito said that the justices were updating the 40-year-old framework that courts look to for evaluating the use of race in drawing congressional districts. Justice Elena Kagan accused the court’s conservative majority of gutting the Voting Rights Act.
Read the court’s decision here
.
Republican reaction:
The White House and other Republicans hailed the ruling, with a spokeswoman for President Trump declaring it “complete and total victory for American voters.” Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican running for governor in Tennessee, vowed to use it “to keep Tennessee a red state.”
Democratic reaction:
Democrats, veterans of the civil rights movement and the Supreme Court’s liberal justices viewed it as further weakening the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark civil rights law. Martin Luther King III, the son of the slain civil rights leader, called the ruling “a moral indictment that reflects a continued retreat from the promise of equal justice.”
Political impact:
The decision will improve Republicans’ fortunes ahead of the midterm elections. How big of an advantage
depends on a variety of factors
.
New maps:
A
handful of states
are expected to use the decision to redraw their voting maps but none moved as fast as Florida. Hours after the Supreme Court ruling, its legislature
approved a new map
that could give Republicans as many as four new seats in the state’s 28-member congressional delegation.
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April 29, 2026, 2:54 p.m. ET
Tim Balk
Politics reporter
Former President Barack Obama said in a statement that Wednesday’s voting rights decision was the work of a Supreme Court that “seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups.” He said “such setbacks can be overcome” but only if “citizens across the country who cherish our democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers” in the midterms and in lower-profile elections.
April 29, 2026, 2:53 p.m. ET
Eduardo Medina
Reporting on the South
South Carolina is in the middle of closely contested Republican primary battle for governor. Today’s ruling has prompted a wave of jubilant statements from several leading candidates, such as Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Alan Wilson, the state attorney general. Evette and other candidates urged the state to get rid of its sole majority-minority district represented by James E. Clyburn, saying it was time to give President Trump all of South Carolina’s Congressional seats. About a quarter of the state’s population is Black.
Read Supreme Court’s Ruling and Dissent on Louisiana Voting Map
The justices, split along ideological lines, found that Louisiana’s voting map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
April 29, 2026, 2:51 p.m. ET
Emily Cochrane
Covering the South
Republicans eye redistricting opportunities in the South, starting with Louisiana.
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Voting in Natchitoches, La., on Election Day in 2024.
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Emily Kask for The New York Times
The sweep and impact of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act may remain uncertain, but the one state clearly affected, Louisiana, faces a very short window to redraw its congressional maps for 2026.
Early voting is set to begin on Saturday, ahead of a May 16 primary date that has captured national attention, as Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican who voted in 2021 to convict President Trump after his second impeachment, tries to stave off two challengers from his right.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on Wednesday that Louisiana lawmakers had illegally used race to draw a new majority-Black House district in 2024 appears unambiguous about the state’s current map. But it came four days before the first ballots in Louisiana are to be cast.
The state’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, said on Wednesday she believed the legislature had time to act on a new map. But, she told reporters, “Obviously, those are decisions that need to be made very quickly.”
Louisiana is one of the few states whose legislature is still in session, and a handful of bills had preemptively been filed that would allow for a new congressional map to be debated and approved.
But Representative Cleo Fields, a Democrat whose district was at the center of the ruling, warned against moving to redraw the maps ahead of the November elections. He pledged “to evaluate all available legislative responses to this ruling and to restore the full protections,” an indication that any quick move to draw him out of the House would yield a court challenge.
What happens next is not clear. A spokeswoman for Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about quick redistricting, though in a statement, the governor did say, “The Supreme Court has affirmed what we have said for years: Drawing districts for political reasons is the states’ prerogative, not a federal civil-rights violation.”
Beyond Mr. Fields’s district, Republicans could also move to dilute the state’s other majority-Black district, a New Orleans-area seat held by Representative Troy Carter, a Democrat.
Mr. Carter acknowledged “they may” try to redraw the map in the coming days. But he guessed that doing so in Louisiana may not be possible with elections so near.
“The governor has made it very clear that he’s in lock step with President Trump,” said Mr. Carter, alluding to the president’s campaign to pressure Republican-held states to conduct rare mid-decade redistricting, which kicked off a bipartisan gerrymandering war that spread from Texas to California to Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia and, on Wednesday, Florida.
The uncertainties surrounding the breadth of the high court’s decision haven’t stopped politicians and strategists from starting pressure campaigns to get the ball rolling in other Southern states. Some of those states would have to call their legislatures back to consider drawing new districts. And at least two, Mississippi and North Carolina, have already held their primaries for Congress.
Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican and the front-runner to be the state’s next governor, called on her party to redraw the lone remaining Democratic district in Tennessee, which is centered in the majority-Black city of Memphis. She pledged that as governor, she would “do everything I can to make this map a reality.”
In response to questions about a new map, Speaker Cameron Sexton of Tennessee said “we are reviewing the recent opinion as I have conversations with the White House and other individuals.”
In Georgia, another candidate for governor, Rick Jackson, called on lawmakers to add redistricting to an expected special session later this year, although Georgia’s May 19 primaries are just three days after Louisiana’s. Early voting began in Georgia on Monday.
With its primaries on June 9, South Carolina has a little more time, and Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, battling in a crowded Republican primary for governor in the state, declared it time “to end the Democratic stronghold on the 6th Congressional District,” a majority-minority district long held by Representative Jim Clyburn, a Black Democrat.
A competitor of hers in the Republican primary, Representative Ralph Norman, agreed. Mr. Clyburn’s district was already gerrymandered by the Republican-dominated legislature to pack Black voters from Charleston with Black voters from Columbia, in a play by Republicans to shore up the coastal First District of South Carolina, which had swung between Democratic and Republican representatives.
Mr. Norman said on Wednesday the legislature should now break up the state’s last Democratic district.
“With a Republican supermajority, we have the ability to end this kind of gerrymandering and restore balance,” he said in a statement.
And in Alabama, where a federal court had imposed a congressional map, Representative Barry Moore, a Republican campaigning for a Senate seat being vacated by Tommy Tuberville’s run for governor, called on the legislature to “redraw these districts the right way, fair, constitutional and representative of our communities.”
Show more
April 29, 2026, 2:45 p.m. ET
Ashley Wu
Here’s where the redistricting wars stand.
The chart below shows the state of play, before the Supreme Court’s ruling, of the unusual mid-decade redistricting wars.
Possible change in 2026
Changed maps
Texas
5R
Missouri
1R
North Carolina
1R
Ohio
1-2R
California
5D
Utah
1D
Virginia
2-4D
2D
to
1R
Action taken to change maps
Florida
3-4R
3R
to
4R
Total possible U.S. House seats
1R
to
5R
Note: Data updated on April 27.
Ashley Cai/The New York Times
The battle began last year with Texas lawmakers heeding President Trump’s call to redraw their maps to add more Republican-leaning seats in the upcoming midterms. Seven states, including Texas, have since adopted new maps this election cycle.
Before the court’s ruling, the number of seats Republicans stood to net seemed more modest than what was initially expected. More states, as my colleagues have pointed out, could have time to redraw their maps, although how many will try before their primaries is yet unclear.
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April 29, 2026, 2:40 p.m. ET
Emily Cochrane
Covering the South
Mayor Randall Woodfin of Birmingham, Ala., a Democrat, said in a statement that “civil rights laws don’t survive because they’re written on paper. They survive because people fight for them, generation after generation.”
“The people who tried to keep our grandparents from voting are not finished,” he added. “Neither are we.”
April 29, 2026, 2:32 p.m. ET
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
White House reporter
President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he had yet to see the Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act, though the White House already issued a statement celebrating the ruling. Trump sounded indifferent on whether states in the South should redraw their voting maps in the wake of the decision.
“Generally, I would think that they would want to do it,” Trump said. He added that it may help some states while it would not make a difference for others.
April 29, 2026, 2:30 p.m. ET
Emily Cochrane
Covering the South
In response to questions about whether Tennessee would redraw its congressional map to eliminate a majority-Black district in Memphis, the state house speaker, Cameron Sexton, demurred. “We are reviewing the recent opinion as I have conversations with the White House and other individuals,” he said.
April 29, 2026, 2:22 p.m. ET
Emily Cochrane
Covering the South
Alabama’s attorney general promised the state would act quickly to “ensure that our congressional maps reflect the will of the people, not a racial quota system the Constitution forbids.”
“The court rightly acknowledged that the South has made extraordinary progress, and that laws designed for a different era do not reflect the present reality,” said Steve Marshall, the top prosecutor, who recently saw his state tangle with federal courts over the Voting Rights Act.
April 29, 2026, 2:02 p.m. ET
Sonia A. Rao
What to know about the Voting Rights Act.
Image
When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, he set off tectonic shifts in American politics.
Credit...
Associated Press
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most momentous pieces of civil rights legislation in the United States, was passed almost 100 years after the 15th Amendment prohibited racial discrimination in voting in the wake of the Civil War.
The bill, championed by Black activists and signed by Lyndon B. Johnson, a white president from a segregated state, culminated decades of activism by those who fought for voting rights in a country scarred by slavery.
Here’s what to know about it.
What is the Voting Rights Act?
Even after the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870, Black people in the South during the Jim Crow era faced intimidation that prevented them from voting, including poll taxes, literacy tests and crusades of violence.
The Voting Rights Act, signed by Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement, was meant to enforce the rights that were protected by the Constitution.
Provisions of the law helped thousands of voters get to the polls, and for the first time since Reconstruction gave Black citizens in the South a significant voice in their government.
What does it do?
At the time the law was passed, only one-third of eligible Black voters were registered in the states where voting was the most difficult, compared with two-thirds of white people, according to the Justice Department.
One section of the act required several Southern states with histories of discrimination to obtain federal permission before changing voter laws. Those states included Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia and many counties of North Carolina.
The measure also prevents voter discrimination based on the language they speak, and provides protections for blind, disabled and illiterate voters. The Justice Department has
called
the law the “most successful piece of civil rights legislation ever adopted by the United States Congress.”
What challenges has it faced?
Congress has extended the Voting Rights Act several times, but there have been
many legal challenges
as well.
In 2013, the Supreme Court dealt a sharp blow to the law with its ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, a case filed by an Alabama county near Birmingham. The court ruled 5 to 4 that states could change election laws without federal approval, which contributed to a wave of voting restrictions from Republican-led states.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 to strike down a voting map in Louisiana, finding that lawmakers had illegally used race when drawing it, further weakening the act.
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April 29, 2026, 2:02 p.m. ET
Eduardo Medina
Reporting on the South
It is unclear how today’s ruling will affect November’s midterm elections. Some Republican officials appear eager to move quickly. One interesting state to monitor is Alabama. There, federal judges ordered the state to stick with its congressional map — which has two majority-Black districts — through 2030.
But only yesterday, Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican now running for governor, wrote an op-ed urging the state’s attorney general to file a motion to vacate that 2030 injunction “the moment” the Supreme Court ruled. If the motion is successful, Tuberville said, a special session could be called and the legislature could authorize a congressional special election this year.
It is unclear if state officials would be eager to follow through on Tuberville’s plan. Mail-in voting has already begun ahead of the state’s May 16 primary, potentially creating legal obstacles to drawing a new map this year. Still, he appeared animated, writing on X on Wednesday: “LET’S GO!”
April 29, 2026, 1:40 p.m. ET
Emily Cochrane
Covering the South
Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana just issued a statement, but it does not address the question of whether the state will move to redraw maps before the November elections. “The Supreme Court has affirmed what we have said for years: drawing districts for political reasons is the States’ prerogative, not a federal civil-rights violation,” Landry said. “Federal judges cannot force a State to engage in race-based redistricting, and plaintiffs can no longer repackage partisan disagreements as Voting Rights Act cases.”
April 29, 2026, 1:39 p.m. ET
Rick Rojas
National reporter
Press Robinson, one of the residents involved in mounting the legal challenge to Louisiana’s congressional maps, said the ruling could have sweeping ramifications beyond Congress. “Judges, school board members, councilmen — doesn’t matter, it will affect them all,” he told reporters in a news conference on Wednesday.
“Many of our elected officials at the local and the state level will disappear and we’ll be back to where we were at the time that slavery was declared illegal in this country,” he added. “This country doesn’t seem to want to advance beyond that time.”
April 29, 2026, 1:27 p.m. ET
Emily Cochrane
Covering the South
In terms of when Louisiana will redraw its map, which was at the center of the case, the state’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, is deferring to the legislature. But she said that she believed it to be possible for the legislature to act and pass a new congressional map before the November midterm elections.
She said she, like many others, was surprised that the court’s opinion came at the end of April, rather than in June toward the end of its term. “We’re grateful to have it now,” she said, noting that decisions on Louisiana’s voting map now needed to be made “very quickly.”
April 29, 2026, 1:26 p.m. ET
Emily Cochrane
Covering the South
Attorney General Liz Murrill of Louisiana, speaking to reporters, said that the ruling “empowers legislators to do the job that the federal constitution always directed legislatures to do.” She added that the ruling will “curb federal judges from being able to superimpose their own policy choices and their own fact finding over that of legislatures.”
Image
Credit...
Nathan Howard/Reuters
April 29, 2026, 1:23 p.m. ET
Rick Rojas
National reporter
Janai Nelson said the court technically stopped short of dismantling Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — an outcome that she and others had regarded as the possible “worst case scenario.” Still, she said the ruling would have devastating impacts.
“What the court did was just as harmful and even more deceptive,” she said. “It’s a day of loss of any remnant or modicum of credibility of this Supreme Court to rise above partisan politics.”
April 29, 2026, 1:23 p.m. ET
Eduardo Medina
Reporting on the South
In a virtual news conference, lawyers with the Ameri
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