Recent election results that cheered Democrats may prove short-lived, if not possibly reversed, when the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a Louisiana case that will affect its electoral maps on multiple levels.
The Bayou State now waits upon the Court’s decision in Callais v. Louisiana to determine whether race will be allowed to be used as a proxy for partisan goals. A decision to rein that in and to provide new, likely more restrictive, parameters for when racial categories can become relevant and legal in drawing district boundaries would give the state a chance to revert back from a map gerrymandered to produce two majority-minority districts almost guaranteeing two of six seats won by Democrats to one where only one such seat exists and Republicans likely would win five of six seats in a state where a third of voters are black.
The whole country watches for this, especially the handful of states where such a decision could lead to new reapportionment options. One such is California, which like Louisiana over the past few decades has had an electorate become increasingly skewed towards one party, but in the opposite direction.
Louisiana has become more Republican friendly, to the point that 25 years ago 60 percent of registrants were Democrats and separately there were more white Democrats than Republicans and black Democrats than Republicans, with the GOP having only 22 percent of the electorate. Today, both major parties have around 36 percent of registrants, with Democrats clinging to about 33,000 more, while there are more Republicans than white and black Democrats combined.
However, in the state many Democrats, especially whites, vote for Republican candidates. In 2000, the GOP’s Pres. George W. Bush scored a 53-47 win, four years after Democrat Pres. Bill Clinton won the state and reelection. Last year, Republican Pres. Donald Trump pummeled the opposition with 60 percent.
Going the other way, in 2007 California over 42 percent of voters listed themselves as Democrats while Republicans had almost 34 percent. By 2023, Democrats had tacked on four more points while Republicans had dropped about ten points.
The states are similar in another way; the population of both has lost ground to the rest of the country since 2000. This century both have lost a seat in the House and California looks to be in real trouble to lose three more by 2030 while Louisiana, under a new GOP governor, has stabilized. Further, migration patterns in California show disproportionately more Republicans leaving while the much smaller influx is disproportionately Democrat.
That increasingly Democrat lean helps to explain why Californians this week blew up their allegedly nonpartisan independent reapportionment commission, which starting next year will leave only three states with such bodies, by passing a constitutional amendment to suspend it. Not that the panel, as others like it, truly is nonpartisan as these tend to have leftist biases that, in the case of California, netted only 9 seats of 52 for Republicans drawn by the panel where registration totals, and even presidential vote in 2024 (Trump received only 38 percent against a favorite daughter) would suggest at least 20 GOP seats.
But unshackled from the panel, California Democrats hope to leverage their as-large supermajorities in the Legislature to rush through maps that could make the imbalance 48-4, in an effort to capture a U.S. House majority for their national party as a result of 2026 elections. If the Supreme Court backs the Callais litigants who say race played too prominent of a role in Louisiana’s map without justification that overrides partisan desires in map-making, they could take a stab at this.
Yet, ironically, depending upon how it’s decided, Callais could torpedo that plan. Right after the election, Republicans in California filed a suit echoing the same arguments as does Callais.
A decision like that also could dynamite a situation similar to Louisiana’s congressional districts, but involving Mississippi’s legislature. A suit covering the same ground as the one which led Louisiana to change its single M/M congressional map to one with two M/M districts ended up with a court order for the state to redraw some House and Senate districts, which it did and had a special election for these. The results enabled Democrats to pick up a House seat and two in the Senate.
Louisiana faces a similar suit, Nairne v. Landry that would have the same impact after all appeals have been exhausted – under current Court jurisprudence. But if Callais is decided as expected, that evaporates as well as Mississippi can revert back to its prior legislative maps.
Thus, Callais not only could allow Louisiana to retain its present legislative maps and revert back its congressional map, all of which benefits Republicans, but also it could produce reversion of the Mississippi legislative maps giving the same advantage to the GOP and scuttle California’s attempt to further gerrymander its congressional map in favor of Democrats (although it also opens up the possibility that Democrats there could use it to maneuver some more seats if they can figure out a way to draw more seats favoring them with a partisan, not racial, component, and if so look for the Democrat supermajority to abolish permanently the commission).
Events continue to magnify the importance of Callais and putting Louisiana in the middle of nationwide repercussions.
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