WASHINGTON- When the U.S. Supreme Court sharply restricted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last week, Democrats in Washington had a message: Redistricting rules have changed, and California, the country's largest blue bastion, may have an additional role to play.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Democrats should “play by the same set of rules” as Republicans. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) vowed to fight in “the Deep South and across the country.” And Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Alabama, was blunt: “I'll take 52 California seats, I sure would. And 17 Illinois seats.”
The calls for action came as Republican governors in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee called special legislative sessions to redraw congressional maps ahead of this year's midterm elections. Florida also approved new maps that could give the GOP four more House seats, and President Trump urged other Republican states to do the same.
The Republican response has intensified pressure on Democrats to act, including in California, where the ruling could upend not only congressional maps but also legislative and local elections.
“We cannot allow this national Republican gerrymandering effort to go unanswered,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach). “If the Republicans accept it, I think we have to leave all options on the table.”
For now, California's response is far from definitive.
Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles) warned against “accelerating a race to the bottom.”
(J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)
The chairman of the California Democratic Party said there are currently no plans to redraw maps, just months after voters approved a constitutional amendment authorizing a mid-decade redistricting backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The Democratic consultant who drew the state's current congressional district boundaries says an all-blue map, while possible, would likely hurt Democrats more than help them in the long run. And some of the state's congressional Democrats worry that the push to match Republican partisan efforts is bad for the American electorate.
“Instead of accelerating a race to the bottom, the next step is to reduce it because it can reach a point of no return,” said Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), one of the state's most prominent Black lawmakers. “And that's where we're headed.”
What California decides (and when) will matter nationally. With 52 seats in Congress, no state has more to offer Democrats in a redistricting war. But experts, lawmakers and party officials say the path forward is more complicated than Washington's calls suggest.
California could see 48 blue seats, up from 52
This is partly because California has already acted. In 2025, voters approved Proposition 50, which drew new congressional district lines designed to favor Democrats for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections. The new maps, which could yield up to 48 Democratic seats out of 52, are now in effect and voters have begun receiving their ballots by mail.
Going further is not currently on the table, at least not yet.
“We still have to win every seat on the map that was drawn in 2025. It seems like a step too far to say we're going to go back to the drawing board and redraw the map,” said Rusty Hicks, chairman of the California Democratic Party.
Hicks said that doesn't mean the issue can't be part of a future discussion, but he said Democrats in other states shouldn't overlook what California has already done.
“We're trying to pick up 48 of them. How many more do you want us to pick up? Do you want it to be 52 blue ones? Well, everyone should get in on the fight,” Hicks said. “Everyone should take some seats. Let's all do this together, because California can't do it alone, it's going to need the rest of the country.”
Others aren't convinced the more aggressive option makes strategic sense in California.
Paul Mitchell, the Democratic redistricting consultant who drew California's Proposition 50 congressional maps, said the push for a 52-0 delegation reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how a partisan map would perform in the state over time.
“A 52-to-zero map would have the potential to backfire,” Mitchell said. “In 2026, we might pick up 52 seats. But then in 2028 or 2030 (a bad year for Democrats, say), Democrats lose 11 of those seats. These districts have been so demonically lured into a Democratic advantage in a good year that, in a bad Democratic year, they don't have the ability to withstand the challenge.”
Ruling could jeopardize state's voting rights law
The political debate over congressional maps has so far dominated the conversation in Washington. But legal scholars and redistricting experts say the ruling could also have consequences in elections for California's city council, school board and county supervisors.
The justices' ruling, decided by the court's conservative majority, says states cannot consider race to create majority-minority congressional districts while allowing them to take partisan interests into account.
“A purely partisan map is actually more defensible now than one drawn with racial considerations,” said Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA. “It goes around the world.”
The ruling now jeopardizes any district drawn at any level of government that relied on the Voting Rights Act to justify its boundaries, Hasen said.
And in California, that uncertainty extends to districts drawn under the state's Voting Rights Act, which extends protections to minority voters beyond federal law, he said. The state law was not directly at issue in the Supreme Court's ruling, but Hasen argues that the court's reasoning could provide new legal grounds for challenging the state law as potentially unconstitutional.
Cities such as Santa Monica and Palmdale have faced lawsuits alleging that their general City Council elections diluted the Latino vote. Palmdale settled its case and agreed to switch to district elections; The Santa Monica case is ongoing. Hasen argued that cities, as well as other bodies such as school boards, could now return to court to challenge whether district maps drawn as a result of the California Voting Rights Act are unconstitutional.
“That hasn't been proven yet,” he said, but he fears the same arguments used to challenge the federal Voting Rights Act could be used against the state law.
At the state level, Republican strategist Matt Rexroad believes the ruling will also affect the California Legislature. He maintains that the lines drawn for state Assembly and Senate districts are racial gerrymandering.
“I would say those lines of legislation are unconstitutional,” Rexroad said. “And those lines will probably change by 2028.”
But Rexroad's biggest concern goes beyond any set of maps: It's the future of California's independent redistricting commission, the nonpartisan body he has championed for years.
A threat to independent redistricting
Rexroad sees a scenario in which the national political environment gives California Democrats little incentive to return map-making power to the commission. If red states continue to aggressively redraw maps, Democrats will have another justification for keeping power in the hands of the Legislature, the same argument made to pass Proposition 50, he said.
“I don't think the California redistricting commission has ever been in greater danger than it is now,” he said.
J. Morgan Kousser, a historian who has testified as an expert witness in voting rights cases for 47 years, said California's commitment to the commission may depend on how aggressive red states act on redistricting.
“If we return to an all-white South in Congress, California may never have a standard of fairness again,” Kousser said. “It may not disarm. It may rearm.”
Mitchell, the redistricting consultant, said he hopes California and other states will choose the disarmament path and that there will be a national push to create independent commissions in each state.
“This is not good for anyone,” he said. “This whole thing was basically a nerd war over lines that didn't really improve any districts anywhere.”
