In response, we’ve seen Democrats in blue states threatening to explore their redistricting options before the midterms, from California to New York. This push comes as most observers expect control of the U.S. House of Representatives to hinge on the outcome of just a handful of congressional races.
 
Our nation has an embarrassing history of politicians manipulating voting maps to gain an electoral advantage at the expense of voters, known as gerrymandering. However, breaking with tradition by drawing new maps now instead of after the next U.S. Census is highly unusual. You’d also be hard-pressed to find another example of a modern American president openly calling for such an effort, for one important reason: It is a pillar of our system of government that voters should choose their politicians, not the other way around.
 
Sometimes, the redistricting process is manipulated by sorting voters based on their political affiliation, known as partisan gerrymandering, which is illegal or unconstitutional in a number of states.
 
Other practices include racial vote dilution and intentional racial discrimination, where maps are drawn that primarily target voters of color. This is illegal under the federal Voting Rights Act and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments — and is precisely what Texas’s current effort seeks to do. We know this because the Trump administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) and Texas Governor Greg Abbott have expressly called for the elimination of districts where Black and Latino voters are the majority.
 
The goal in each example is to weaken the voting power of the targeted group, thereby increasing the power of one group or candidate over another.
 
Such considerations should never factor into redistricting. Rather, map drawers ought to consider a range of factors to create boundaries that best reflect the communities within each state, giving voters a fair opportunity to elect politicians who best represent their interests. This applies at all levels of government, from congressional districts down to city-level elections.
 
Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is steadfastly committed to advancing solutions that produce fair voting maps in every state. This fight takes various forms, including policy advocacy and litigation on behalf of voters harmed by unfair maps.
 
The Voting Rights Act allows voters of color whose communities are divided by unfair maps to challenge those maps in court. Sometimes these lawsuits are brought by a specific group. At other times, different groups living in the same area who should be part of the same district, known as a coalition district, join forces and file suit.
 
CLC represents Black and Latino voters in one such case in Galveston County, Texas. As part of its redistricting pressure campaign, Trump’s DOJ is leaning heavily on a twisted interpretation of an appeals court ruling in this case by claiming that four congressional districts in Texas are unconstitutional racial gerrymanders because of their racial composition. If Texas lawmakers yield to the pressure, the likely outcome is a new congressional map that amounts to straightforward intentional racial discrimination.
 
We are also litigating a very important case challenging voting maps that discriminate against Native voters in North Dakota. The U.S. Supreme Court recently granted our request to pause a dangerous appeals court ruling in this case that threatens to undermine the Voting Rights Act across the country by preventing voters from suing to enforce the VRA. CLC will ask the high court to take this case during its upcoming term.
 
To combat partisan gerrymandering, CLC represents voters bringing legal challenges at the state level, achieving success in Wisconsin and currently awaiting a similar victory in Utah.
 
As a policy advocate, CLC works with partners to help voters get independent redistricting commissions (IRCs) adopted in their states. The most prominent example of this work comes from the state of Michigan, where CLC provided policy expertise for creating an IRC and successfully defended the IRC in court.
 
Stopping gerrymandering once and for all
 
The ultimate solution to the redistricting arms race is to pass federal laws banning partisan gerrymandering and strengthening the Voting Rights Act.
 
The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, just reintroduced in Congress, would make it much easier to stop states and localities from implementing racially discriminatory voting maps. The Freedom to Vote Act, last introduced in 2023, bans partisan gerrymandering, supports independent redistricting and prohibits mid-decade redistricting. These are the solutions that all voters need and deserve. 
 
Americans may not fully grasp the minutiae of redistricting in their particular states, but they inherently understand that allowing politicians to pick their voters through the map-drawing process is the opposite of how our democracy is supposed to work. It’s a thinly veiled form of election manipulation that must be stopped wherever it is tried. This is particularly true of the current fight, which is happening just a few months before the filing deadlines for congressional candidates in some states, including Texas.
 
In our elections, every voice should be heard, and every vote should count equally. Gerrymandering undermines these fundamental principles, which is why Campaign Legal Center, powered by its supporters, is dedicated to ending this anti-democratic, power-grabbing tactic.