A seismic shift has recently occurred around redistricting in the U.S. Gerrymandering – both partisan and racial — has often been decried for rigging elections. Yet the power of the federal courts to police gerrymandering has been greatly diminished due to U.S. Supreme Court decisions like Rucho v. Common Cause, which held that the federal courts could not reach claims of partisan gerrymandering, and Shelby County v. Holder which eliminated the ability of the federal government to regulate racial vote dilution under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (the VRA). Recently, partisan gamesmanship reached a whole new level.

As of early 2026, nearly a quarter of U.S. states have engaged in some form of mid-decade redistricting in anticipation of the 2026 congressional race. Texas, at the behest of the Trump Administration, acted first this past summer, and California responded in kind via popular referendum. And just this month, the Supreme Court let the California maps stand (as it did last December for the Texas maps). According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, twelve other states made mid-decade changes to their congressional maps – a number of those specifically for gaining partisan advantage.

Opening the door to rampant, legislature-initiated mid-decade redistricting allows politicians to openly redesign districts in anticipation of specific elections to maintain power rather than waiting for the decennial census to redistrict. There is no federal constitutional or statutory rule limiting the frequency of redistricting. And the fact that the Rucho decision prevents federal courts from hearing partisan gerrymandering claims leaves states nearly unconstrained around the when and why of redistricting, at the expense of voters’ voices.

Modern mid-decade redistricting is rare. Lawsuits under the VRA or other state or federal law may require the redrawing of districts. However, most states over the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries limited redistricting on their own initiative to once a decade, after the constitutionally required decennial census. This allows the districts drawn to reflect the electorate – the people – who then elect their representatives. Redistricting mid-decade to force a partisan advantage likely shifts a state’s representation away from the state’s partisan balance, thus ensuring that the congressional delegation fails to reflect the partisan makeup of the voters.

Moreover, engaging in redistricting only once per decade allows that decade for the voters to dictate the interests of their politicians (or remove unresponsive politicians) rather than letting politicians (re-)create districts suitable for their re-election. This promotes the ultimate accountability that voters expect in a democracy. That said, it is legal for politicians in power to draw districts within the once-a-decade process to protect their own political interests (unless state law forbids it). But the ten-year window sets the expectations of competition in a district and prevents the opportunism that can be spurred by shifting voter views.

This movement towards unfettered partisan gerrymandering is intertwined with the constitutional and statutory rules prohibiting gerrymandering on the basis of race – now, the only federal constraints on redistricting. Section 2 of the VRA prevents racial vote dilution. The Court, in Shaw v. Reno in 1994 and three decades of case law thereafter, has interpreted the Constitution to prevent state legislatures from making race the predominant reason for drawing a political district.

But even this doctrine is shifting towards deference to elected legislatures’ preferences, as illustrated by the current redistricting debacle. In Texas, after rejecting the Trump administration’s political argument for mid-decade gerrymandering, the Trump Department of Justice argued to Texas that its congressional maps contained unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. Only then did Texas engage in mid-decade redistricting. Despite a district court order enjoining the 2025 maps as racial gerrymanders, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Abbott v. League of United Latin American Citizens, overruled that finding on the grounds of deference to the state and let the maps proceed for the 2026 election. In California, after Proposition 50 passed, California Republicans and the U.S. Department of Justice sued California in Tangipa v. Newsom, alleging that the Proposition 50 maps were racial gerrymanders because they focused on “Voting Rights Act districts.” The lower federal court rejected the argument for a preliminary injunction, and the Supreme Court, without comment, allowed the lower court ruling to stand. Thus, both Texas and California’s mid-decade gerrymanders may go forward for the 2026 congressional election.

The new normal is that the doctrines designed to prevent impermissible racial segregation in elections are now used as proxies for the fight over partisan gerrymandering. But the Court’s increasing deference to state legislatures regarding racial gerrymandering claims is limiting the ability of these doctrines to be a check on gerrymandering. This shift is poised to increase further as the Court reconsiders Section 2 of the VRA and its applicability to redistricting disputes in Louisiana v. Callais.

While considering the consequences of Callais for race and redistricting merits its own discussion – to come in a subsequent blog post — suffice it to say here that this trend towards partisan, mid-decade redistricting nearly absent judicial guardrails sets a dangerous precedent for decades to come.  It risks furthering partisan manipulation and political entrenchment that makes voters a means for politicians’ ends, rather than allowing voters the authentic opportunity to hold politicians accountable. And the preference for such legislative discretion may serve to hollow out the core of political civil rights doctrine: the protection of the people from political racial segregation.