Democrats and the progressive left continue to lambast the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais to strike down the Bayou State’s second majority-Black congressional district as a racial gerrymander. Democrat leaders have used vicious and ugly attacks to pronounce the decision as racist and insist that it guts the Voting Rights Act (VRA). In a heinous allegation, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said “the ghosts of the Confederacy have afflicted the United States Supreme Court majority and are invading and haunting the nation right now,” while Alabama State Rep. Juandalyn Givan called Justice Clarence Thomas an Uncle Tom, saying “his ancestors had to be the ones that sold us out in Africa.”
But packing congressional districts by race was not an explicit part of the Voting Rights Act President Lyndon Johnson signed in 1965. The practice of racial engineering emerged through later judicial interpretation, particularly in the Thornburg v Gingles ruling in 1986, and it is clear now that, whatever the segregated districts were supposed to achieve, it didn’t work.
Majority-minority districts have distorted the promise of the Voting Rights Act from eliminating heinous Jim Crow laws and ensuring everyone has equal access to the polls to demanding that Congressional districts be established with deliberate race consciousness to ensure that African Americans and Hispanics would be elected.
That has resulted in the creation of political ghettos over the past several decades, that segregate black and Hispanic candidates and limit both coalition building and broader electoral competition. Racially gerrymandered districts stifle minority voices instead of expanding them.
Currently 55 of the 59 African American members of Congress represent majority-minority districts. They are elected in districts that have been set aside for them so they don’t have to compete for the votes of others in the community who are not black. Conversely, other candidates can ignore black voters because they only vote in segregated Congressional districts.
As Supreme Court Justice Thomas noted in his opinion, getting rid of racially gerrymandered districts is critical to reduce polarization and force political candidates of all races and ethnicities to compete for voters with colorblind platforms and policies.
America’s democracy was not designed to thrive with set-aside representation and closed systems. It is structured for openness and debate – certainly not the “racial sorting” that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito described in his majority opinion.
Even in a majority-minority state like Texas, African American and Hispanic leaders who represent racially gerrymandered districts have not been able to expand their base beyond those districts.
The truth about racially gerrymandered districts was pointed out to me when I was a reporter decades ago by the late Charlie Rangel, the flashy New York City Congressman, who explained, off the record, that New York’s Democrat machine would never back him for a statewide run because he had no track record getting white votes.
Rangel represented Harlem, a court-ordered majority-minority district, and by the year 2000, he’d already served 30 years in Congress. He was the first African American to Chair the House Ways and Means Committee and was a force in D.C. But when a U.S. Senate seat opened up, Rangel was essentially told to stay in his place and Empire State Democrats rallied behind Hillary Clinton, who didn’t even live in New York.
The push for racially gerrymandered districts by the left is not unlike their demand for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs that erased the principle of equality and replaced it with equity – insisting all outcomes must be the same.
Both are condescending to African Americans and other minorities – insisting they cannot compete – and both have failed to bring about significant positive improvements for Blacks and Hispanics in electoral politics. In the 40 years since they have been in place, there is no clear indication they have meaningfully increased minority voter participation.
Increases in the number of Black and Hispanic congressional representatives have come almost exclusively from increasing the number of racially gerrymandered districts. There are some exceptions in Texas where U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt was elected from a white majority district and Tony Gonzales was elected in a district where voters were mixed Hispanic, Black and white.
America elected Barack Obama president twice almost 20 years ago. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who ran for Vice President in 2024, was elected to serve in the U.S. Senate from the largest state in the country. Neither of them ever were elected from a majority-minority district.
A political system that sorts voters by race in order to guarantee outcomes is not making progress – it is a retreating to the days of segregation. The Supreme Court has finally made it clear that racially gerrymandered districts should never have been allowed. Democrats – and all Americans – should take the win and celebrate this decision.
Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former Senior Advisor to Texas. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.