The U.S. Supreme Court could upend the midterm elections this year by striking down a key provision in the Voting Rights Act.
Republicans face long odds against maintaining its narrow House majority with President Donald Trump dragging down GOP approval with his own negative performance ratings, and no party successfully holding on to unified control of both houses of Congress and the White House in a midterm election since 1978, but the Supreme Court could offer a glimmer of hope, reported Bloomberg.
"Trump’s strategy of pressuring red states to redraw their congressional districts has largely fizzled," wrote Bloomberg columnist Ronald Brownstein. "Though Texas and other Republican-controlled states have acted , the combination of GOP reluctance elsewhere (most prominently in Indiana) and offsetting Democratic responses (most notably in California) has reduced the GOP’s net advantage from this unusual mid-decade tit-for-tat to just a handful of seats - -not enough to meaningfully improve their chances of maintaining control."
"But the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority could throw the House GOP a lifeline," Brownstein added.
The court's conservatives appeared ready to limit or even overturn the provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that prohibits changes in election laws that result in discrimination against racial minorities, and a ruling in that direction would almost certainly set off another round of congressional redistricting – especially in GOP-led states in the south.
"Depending on how many states act, that could tilt at least another seven or eight Congressional seats toward the GOP now, and likely many more over time — enough to reinforce their cushion in the near- and long-term battle for House control," Brownstein wrote.
The court typically waits until the end of its session in June for decisions as important as this one, but many experts believe the right-wing majority will be tempted to tilt the 2026 election in Republicans' favor by issuing a ruling much sooner, leaving plenty of time for states to redraw their congressional maps to eliminate seats held by Black and Latino Democrats.
"Weakening the VRA sits at the crossroads of two of the court’s most consistent patterns under Chief Justice John Roberts: rolling back federal voting rules and unwinding civil rights law," Brownstein wrote.
"Down one road, the Roberts Court has repeatedly limited Washington’s role in setting rules for elections — typically over unified opposition from the Democratic appointees," Brownstein added. "Down the other path, the GOP majority has also prohibited race-conscious remedies for prior discrimination, most dramatically in rulings on college admissions and public school segregation."
The current VRA case involving a challenge to a majority-Black district in Louisiana, would allow the conservative justices to advance both of their long-term goals, and close observers believe that Florida, Georgia and Louisiana would quickly redraw their maps if the majority strikes down that race-based provision, and other states could follow.
"A future in which people of color provide the growth that allows Southern states to add more congressional seats but are then denied a meaningful chance to represent those seats uncomfortably resembles the Constitution’s notorious three-fifths compromise — which counted slaves (as three-fifths of a free person) toward allocating House seats and electoral votes, but denied them the vote," Brownstein wrote. "Echoing that injustice would be a dubious but fitting capstone to Roberts’ long crusade against a federal role in both securing fair elections and safeguarding civil rights."
