It has been a long and winding road to the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision that turned redistricting politics on its head two weeks ago. 

The bottom line: The court ruled race-based redistricting is unconstitutional but partisan redistricting is not.

For those of us who are not lawyers, the decision may seem contradictory, but it is anchored in constitutional and court precedents.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who wrote the majority opinion, argued that “the Constitution almost never permits the Federal Government or a State to discriminate on the basis of race.” An equal protection argument.  

This Supreme Court decision may seem difficult to decipher, but what the court seems to say is that it is legal for a redistricting effort to have political or legislative objectives.  Partisans on either side may disagree with those objectives, but they can be legitimate considerations in drawing maps. 

Calling the Louisiana map at issue an “unconstitutional gerrymander,” Alito explained in his opinion, “One may lament partisan gerrymandering, but for the reasons explained in Rucho [a 2019 Supreme Court decision], partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in federal court.”  

Racially based gerrymandering, however, does not fall under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, unless, as Alito wrote, “the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.” In other words, if a state redistricts with the intention of disenfranchising certain voters based on their race, Section 2 remains a viable remedy.

To truly understand Callais, however, you have to understand some recent redistricting history. The 1990 congressional elections represented the 19^th consecutive loss for Republicans who hadn’t controlled the House since 1952.  

Even in the 1984 election, when Ronald Reagan won 49 out of 50 states, House Republicans won only 181 seats while Democrats gained 253, a 72-seat majority. After the 1990 election, the Republican minority shrunk to 167 seats, giving Democrats a 100-seat advantage. 

That advantage was largely caused by the highly partisan lines drawn by Democrats after the 1980 census. In last week’s column, I described how California locked in one-sided districts that benefited Democrats for the entire decade.  

After the 1990 census, Republicans found themselves facing another decade of minority status with another round of Democratic gerrymandering on the horizon, but this time with Democrats using better technology and data. 

Ironically, Black and Hispanic populations, as minorities, were facing a similar redistricting dilemma. To maximize Democratic strength in the maximum number of districts, Democrats had gerrymandered minority voters, who were overwhelmingly Democratic, into majority white districts at the expense of electing more minority members of the House.

Politics do make some strange bedfellows, and that’s what happened after the 1990 census. Republicans were then a political minority and, because of gerrymandering, likely to remain so. Black and Hispanic voters were racial minorities whose representation had been minimized by Democratic gerrymandering. So, an unlikely coalition emerged between Republicans and minority politicians in a short-term, mutually beneficial effort to employ Section 2 to both sides’ advantage. 

Occasionally, there is a certain justice in political pragmatism. As a result of this unusual coalition, the number of Black lawmakers in the House went from 26 seats in the 1990 election to 39 seats in the 1992 election, an increase of 50 percent. 

The same was true for Hispanic House members, going from 11 in 1990 to 17 in 1992, an increase of 55 percent. Republicans went from 167 to 176 seats which led Republicans to finally win the House majority in 1994 with 230 seats. 

The Georgia example

Georgia is perhaps the best example of how this coalition impacted states. In the 1990 election, eight white Democrats, one Black Democrat and one white Republican won House seats. 

After redistricting, in the 1992 election, with Section 2 playing a major role and Georgia adding a seat, white Democrats won only four seats, Black Democrats won three seats and white Republicans four. 

In the 1994 election, party control flipped with Republicans winning seven seats and Democrats winning four: three Black members and one white. So, from 1990 the number of white Democratic members of Congress in Georgia went from eight to one. 

Nationally, after the 2024 election, Black and Hispanic members held 110 House seats,  according to Brookings Vital Statistics on Congress.

While acknowledging the concept of a group of voters having the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice, the court in the Louisiana case also ruled that specific redistricting criteria set by a state is the relative factor, not race. However, the court also asserted that one reasonable criterion is to be able to “promote the prospects of a particular party.” 

Future impact

If and how the Callais decision gets translated into the immediate redrawing of congressional districts in individual states is the big variable going forward. There are several minority districts that could be redrawn, although the timetable for this may prevent action before the 2026 election. 

Given that the RealClearPolitics generic ballot average favors Democrats today by seven points, some lean-Republican districts may be put into play — making the redrawing of districts more challenging. Democrats need to remember that when maps are pushed too far, as we are seeing in Virginia, leaning districts are just that. The same applies to Republicans. 

The central question of the redistricting debate isn’t whether the Supreme Court’s ruling is a step backwards in terms of racial equality, or a judicial step forward toward the color blind redistricting that the Constitution requires. It’s whether the court’s decision to allow partisan gerrymandering serves our democratic process in the long run.  

Is it in the best interest of the country to let mapmakers apply algorithms that can explicitly define a political map for the course of a decade, no matter the broader changes in the electorate that can and often do occur?  

All of this needs to be considered in the context of today’s political and social environment. 2026 isn’t 1990. The country has seen its first Black president and vice president, and a huge increase in minority representation at every level of government. Hispanic voters are playing a much bigger role in the political arena across the country and are rapidly becoming the swing vote in many competitive districts.

So which party does the Callais decision benefit?  

Short term, maybe Republicans. Long term, it’s unclear.  

Hopefully, democracy.

David Winston is the president of The Winston Group and a longtime adviser to congressional Republicans. He previously served as the director of planning for Speaker Newt Gingrich. He advises Fortune 100 companies, foundations and nonprofit organizations on strategic planning and public policy issues, as well as serving as an election analyst for CBS News.