U.S. Supreme Court Seeks Fresh Briefs on Louisiana Map, Weighing the Voting Rights Act Against Equal-Protection Limits

By EditorAug 04, 2025

The U.S. Supreme Court issued an unsigned order on Aug. 1 asking for supplemental briefs in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that claims Louisiana’s new six-district congressional map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Louisiana and a coalition of Black voters who support the 2024 map must file by Aug. 27; the “non-African American” voters challenging the plan have until Sept. 17, with replies due Oct. 3. The justices already heard oral argument in March but held off any decision in the case, signaling they wanted additional input before deciding whether the second majority-Black district created last year should stand. The…

Redistricting Race RulesLatest, lawindepth, louisiana

Texas Legislature Releases its First Congressional Map in Special Session

By EditorJul 30, 2025

Republican leaders in the Texas House have unveiled a draft congressional map for the ongoing special redistricting session, explicitly aiming to deliver up to five additional GOP seats, an outcome President Trump has publicly encouraged. Gov. Greg Abbott placed redistricting on the session’s agenda after Trump’s Department of Justice warned that portions of the current map may be unconstitutional. Still, House Republicans have acknowledged that partisan advantage is a central motive of this mid-decade redraw. The draft is still subject to amendment during the special session, and it is unclear whether additional versions will emerge. The aggressive move in Texas…

Strategy and PoliticsLatest, News, Texas, texas redistricting

Texas Redistricting Update: July 2025

By EditorJul 29, 2025

Governor Greg Abbott convened a 30-day special legislative session on July 21, instructing lawmakers to redraw the state’s 38 U.S. House districts. The call follows a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stating that four districts anchored in Houston and Fort Worth were "coalition districts," and may have been drawn “along strict racial lines,” (a.k.a racial gerrymanders), potentially violating the 14th Amendment. Lawmakers now have until roughly mid-August to craft new boundaries that satisfy equal-population and federal law requirements. Ongoing litigation over the 2021 mapsWhile legislators work on new boundaries, a three-judge federal panel in El Paso is…

Enacting a Redistricting Map, Redistricting Litigation, Texasmid-decade redistricting, racial gerrymandering, Texas, texas redistricting, Voting Rights Act

U.S. Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Decision on Private Voting Rights Act Lawsuits

By EditorJul 26, 2025

The U.S. Supreme Court has delivered a significant, albeit temporary, reprieve for voting rights advocates and individual litigants, putting on hold a controversial ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit holding that private plaintiffs cannot bring claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), a ruling that could severely limit the ability of individual voters and advocacy groups to sue under the Act. This specific case originated from a challenge to North Dakota's 2021 state legislative map, which the plaintiffs, two Native American tribes and individual voters, argued diluted Native American voting power by…

Voting Rights Actcaseupdates, Latest, lawindepth, News, North Dakota

Census Bureau Releases Initial Plan for Conducting 2030 Census

By EditorJul 24, 2025

Press Release JULY 23, 2025 — The U.S. Census Bureau today released the first version of the 2030 Census Operational Plan, along with an interactive tool for exploring it. This plan documents the initial, high-level design for the next census, outlining the breadth of work needed to conduct and support a quality population and housing count. Future iterations of the plan will describe the work in more detail. Read the 2030 Census Operational Plan. The plan, “Baseline 1,” provides a snapshot of big-picture activities the Census Bureau will undertake to conduct the 2030 Census: Establish where to count. Identify all the addresses where people could…

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A Maryland Democrat Proposes Countering Out-of-Cycle Partisan Redistricting

By EditorJul 24, 2025

Maryland House of Delegates Majority Leader, Del. David Moon, a Montgomery County Democrat, is drafting legislation designed to counter partisan congressional redistricting efforts in other states. Moon's proposal would mandate that if any other state deviates from the norm of redrawing congressional districts only once every 10 years, Maryland would be required to do the same. This move comes as President Donald Trump is pushing states like Texas to redraw their maps outside the typical post-Census schedule, with Texas Governor Greg Abbott having called a special 30-day legislative session to consider redistricting, among other issues. Moon's "basic idea" is that…

Maryland, Partisan GerrymanderingMaryland, mid-decade redistricting

Can New York Redraw Its Congressional Districts?: NY Elections, Census and Redistricting Update (July 21, 2025)

By EditorJul 22, 2025

This New York redistricting update is excerpted from citylandnyc.org with permission from the New York Law School. Can New York Redraw Its Congressional Districts? As the Texas Legislature begins to meet this week to take up a partisan effort to redraw the state’s congressional map, California Governor Gavin Newsom is exploring how his state could redraw its map to counter the power play in the Lone Star State. Governor Newsom believes that one must play hardball when confronted by the type of demands requested by the White House. The Texas Legislature has few restrictions on what it can do when redistricting. The…

New Yorkmid-decade redistricting, new york

Proposed Census Changes Would Shift How Non-Citizens Are Counted for Apportionment

By EditorJul 18, 2025

NPR reports that Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are once again trying to whittle down who “counts” when House seats and Electoral College votes are allocated. Three GOP bills introduced this year would direct the 2030 census to identify non-citizens and then subtract some, or all, of them from the population totals used for apportionment. The newest measure, advanced this week by a House Appropriations subcommittee on a 9-6 party-line vote, would bar the Census Bureau from including undocumented residents. Companion bills from Sen. Bill Hagerty and Rep. Chuck Edwards go further, targeting every non-citizen, including those with green cards…

Census Lawapportionment, citizenship question, News, U.S. Census Bureau

Florida High Court Affirms 2022 Congressional Map, Eliminating Former Majority-Black District

By EditorJul 18, 2025

The Florida Supreme Court’s 5-1 decision on Thursday keeps Gov. Ron DeSantis’ congressional map intact, which splits a Jacksonville-to-Tallahassee coalition of Black voters and cements the GOP’s current 20-8 edge in the U.S. House delegation. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz called the eliminated Black district in the 2022 map a “race-based gerrymander” that violated equal-protection principles and said lawmakers had a “superior obligation” to follow federal, not state, law when race and redistricting collide. The lone dissent warned the opinion could render the amendment’s non-diminishment clause “practically ineffective.” The decision signals that Florida’s newly constituted high court…

Race in Redistrictingcaseupdates, Florida

New Wisconsin Lawsuit Against Congressional Map Features “Anti-Competitive” Claims

By EditorJul 14, 2025

A bipartisan coalition of business leaders operating as the "Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy" filed a lawsuit in the Dane County Circuit Court last Thursday that brands the state’s eight-seat congressional map a “textbook example of an anti-competitive gerrymander.” Represented by Law Forward, Stafford Rosenbaum, and Harvard’s Election Law Clinic, the plaintiffs argue the current lines, drawn in 2022 under a conservative “least-changes” directive and adopted by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, suppress electoral competition in violation of several Wisconsin constitutional guarantees. The case arrives only weeks after the Wisconsin Supreme Court (now under a liberal majority) refused to hear two…

State Laws, WisconsinCASEDOCS, Wisconsin