The Supreme Court handed California Democrats a major victory Wednesday, refusing to block a new congressional map that could flip up to five Republican House seats blue in time for this year's midterm elections. The court did not explain its decision and offered no dissents, clearing the way for the gerrymandered districts approved by voters last November through Proposition 50, a ballot measure championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. But is this really the final word?
At the moment, it looks like bad news, and many people are scratching their heads. California Republicans had asked the justices to intervene after a special three-judge federal panel denied their request to block the map on January 14, 2026, ruling 2-1 that the GOP failed to prove race drove the new district lines. It should come as no surprise that those two votes came from an Obama judge and a Biden judge.
They concluded "that the evidence of any racial motivation driving redistricting is exceptionally weak, while the evidence of partisan motivations is overwhelming.”
However, they knew better.
California Republicans argued that the map violated the Constitution's 14th Amendment equal protection clause and the 15th Amendment’s prohibition on racial discrimination in voting, citing comments by the map's designer, Paul Mitchell. Mitchell admitted that race factored into his work.
Related: SCOTUS Allows California’s Gerrymandered Map
Judge Kenneth K. Lee, a Trump appointee and the dissenting vote in that decision, wasn't shy about calling out the real motivation behind California's map. "California sullied its hands with this sordid business when it engaged in racial gerrymandering as part of its mid-decade congressional redistricting plan to add five more Democratic House seats," Lee wrote in his dissent. He pointed to Paul Mitchell as the smoking gun, noting that the mapmaker "refused to appear before the panel, but had publicly boasted to his political allies that he had drawn the map to ‘ensure that the Latino districts’ favored Democrats."
So, why didn’t the Supreme Court intervene? I have a theory, and it could mean that this battle isn’t over yet.
There’s a chance the justices declined to take up the case because they're already expected to rule on Louisiana v. Callais, the case that will ultimately decide whether the creation of heavily black or Hispanic districts to ensure minority voters can elect candidates of their choice violates the 14th and 15th Amendments. Louisiana v. Callais focuses on whether Louisiana's creation of a second majority-black district required by the Voting Rights Act violates the Equal Protection Clause. The case will determine the ongoing scope of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana and will have a nationwide impact.
Why does that matter? Well, if the Supreme Court rules that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutionally permitted racial gerrymandering, it could undermine or invalidate maps like California's that aim to boost minority voting influence, even if lower courts deemed them partisan. The Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais is still pending.
Even if it doesn’t change things for California, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller estimates that ending racial gerrymandering will still have a huge impact on Democrat representation in Congress, estimating that racial gerrymandering gives Democrats as many as 20 extra seats in Congress.
