The Supreme Court Drops All Pretense of Fairness

The Supreme Court spent years telling us it couldn’t change the maps too close to an election. Then it tore them up in the middle of one.

Let’s travel back in time to January 2022, when the Supreme Court did something that would seem unfathomable today: it ruled in favor of Black voters in Alabama. The Justices found that the state had illegally packed Black voters - more than a quarter of Alabama’s entire electorate - into just one of Alabama’s seven congressional districts. Black voters were set to get a second opportunity district. Huge win.

Well, almost.

While the Supreme Court did rule in favor of drawing a second Black opportunity district, it forced Alabama to use the illegal maps anyway. The reason: it was too close to the election. They relied on a doctrine called the Purcell principle, which says that courts can’t make changes too close to an election because of the disruption it might cause to voters. Justices Kavanaugh and Alito put it in writing: “Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others.”

In 2022, Black voters in Alabama went to the polls using maps the courts had already ruled were illegal. The disruption of correcting an injustice, the Court decided, was worse than the injustice itself.

Same, But Different

Fast forward to November 2025. This time, Black and Latino voters in Texas score their own win: the Supreme Court found that Texas’ congressional map was an unconstitutional gerrymander. I bet you can guess what happened next.

Two weeks later, despite the win, the Supreme Court blocked the implementation of a new map. Same reasoning, nearly identical language. In offering relief in the form of a new map, the district court had “improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.”

The Texas primary was in March 2026. Four months away.

Two states. Two illegal maps. Two wins for minority voters. Both erased by the same Court invoking the same doctrine about the same thing: we cannot disrupt an upcoming election, even to correct a wrong, even with four months to spare.

Cut To

On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Callais, gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act, the last major federal protection against racially discriminatory maps. Five days later, on May 4, the Court did something it refused to do in Alabama or Texas: it made the judgment effective immediately, bypassing the standard 32-day window that exists specifically to allow parties to seek clarification or rehearing.

No mention of the “unanticipated and unfair consequences.” No mention of “confusion.” No mention of “upsetting the delicate balance.” All their words, not mine.

At the moment the Supreme Court acted, more than 104,000 Louisiana voters had already cast early ballots. Another 42,000 absentee ballots had been submitted when Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry ultimately suspended the congressional primaries altogether.

The same Supreme Court that told Black voters in Alabama and Texas that they’d have to live with illegal maps because a primary was four months away had no problem blowing up an ongoing election in Louisiana.

The Rule Is: There Are No Rules

There’s a pattern here. The Purcell principle exists when it protects one set of voters. It disappears when it protects another. Every procedural precaution is taken when the beneficiaries are white Republicans. No such precautions exist when the beneficiaries are Black, Brown, or Democratic.

This is not an oversight or a coincidence. It is the point.

What should be clear by this point is that the Supreme Court justices are not neutral arbiters of the law. They never were and they aren’t now. Just as the Republicans are not partners in democracy. They never were and they aren’t now. To that end, we get nowhere conferring goodwill to the other side. As I write in my new book, The Day After, about this antiquated notion of compromising with a party that is wholly disinterested in bipartisanship:

How have Republicans managed to skew democracy so much? Because they pursue power over principle, whereas too many Democrats pursue fairness and good government. Republicans controlled the drawing of 191 of the districts in 2024, compared to only 75 controlled by Democrats. The rest of the House districts were drawn by commissions, courts, or divided state governments. In the Democratic strongholds of California and New York, there are independent redistricting commissions. In Texas and Florida, there is no such thing. In Republican-­ controlled districts, there is little legal recourse to correct the maps. In their largely conservative courts, the judges often refrain from interfering with map schemes—­ unlike the mostly liberal courts reviewing maps in Democratic districts.

I wrote The Day After as a blueprint for how to fight back— how to actually wield power effectively when we get it, while we still have the chance to wield it. If you’d like to support my work and amplify this message, I ask that you please pre-order a copy here.

Now is the time to use every tool at our disposal, because winning is existential. If Republicans are gerrymandering Democrats out of existence in every state they control, we absolutely must fight back. That means Democrats in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Colorado, Illinois, Washington, and Oregon need to start the process of redrawing their maps. And I understand that it’s not good government, but if we lean on good government solutions, we’re going to good government ourselves into obscurity. We gain nothing by sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that none of this is happening. The only way we actually emerge from this with our democracy intact is if we fight hard and fight to win.