Democrats are losing their minds because the Supreme Court might nix the legal doctrines that have read the 1965 Voting Rights act as requiring states to racially gerrymander House seats.
The VRA’s Section 2 actually bars discrimination on the basis of race or skin color, but courts have cited other VRA provisions as mandating “majority-minority” districts.
Judging from this week’s oral arguments in Louisiana v Callais, the Supremes seem likely to end (or drastically limit) that mandate.
Good: As Chief Justice John Roberts put it in a different case, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Two wrongs, in other words, don’t make a right.
Whether the mandate was ever wise, America is far different now from 1965, when laws kept African Americans in much of the country from voting, and carving out minority-majority districts seemed a fair way to ensure their representation.
The country then was about 85% white; today it’s closer to 58%, and attitudes have drastically changed; racist voting laws are long gone and all other institutionalized discrimination are long gone.
Indeed, it’s not at all uncommon for districts to elect reps who aren’t the same race as the local majority.
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) district is 60% white; African-American Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s (D-Mass.) district is only 20% black.
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) is a white man elected in a majority-black district; Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), a black man in a majority-white district.
The same goes for districts with substantial Asian-American and Latino populations.
For all Democrats’ jitters, it’s not even clear that ending racial gerrymanders will have a clear partisan effect now; it could lead to more districts that are genuinely competitive — which actually leads to better representation for all voters in that district.
It was the courts, not any law passed by Congress, that imposed race-based districting; the Justices would be entirely justified in undoing what has clearly become a judge-made injustice.