This Week at Democracy Docket: GOP Gerrymandering Puts Fair Elections at Risk

By Zachary Roth

WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 24: Black Louisiana voters and civil rights advocates call on SCOTUS to uphold a fair and representative congressional map in Louisiana v. Callais at Supreme Court of the United States on March 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Legal Defense Fund)

This was the week when it became clear to anyone paying attention: The GOP’s drive to gerrymander districts in their favor — usually at the cost of minority representation — threatens the long-term fairness of elections.

And Democracy Docket covered it from every angle.

The biggest news was at the Supreme Court Wednesday, where the conservative justices sounded positively eager to gut the Voting Rights Act, making it much harder to stop racial discrimination in voting.

Democracy Docket’s Jim Saksa laid out the stakes ahead of oral arguments, then explained how things went (tl;dr version: not well, if you care about minority voting rights, fair elections, or democracy). We also ran a liveblog, featuring a stream of real-time contributions from our Research team of legal experts, as well as from Marc. 

Democracy Docket’s Jen Rice was back from  El Paso where she was just about the only national reporter covering the hearing over Texas’ extreme gerrymander. Here’s her wrap-up on what we learned in court. 

But the prize for the most egregious gerrymander may go to Utah Republicans, who not only are trying to ram thru a map that could net them all of the state’s congressional seats, but also passed a separate law to undermine a fair-maps ballot measure passed by voters, aiming to prevent the courts from striking down their re-draw.  Democracy Docket’s Matt Cohen brings you the sordid details.

Meanwhile, a slew of other Republican-led states, from North Carolina to Indiana to Kansas, took important steps toward conducting their own gerrymanders. Jim had you covered on the GOP’s gerrymander fever kicking into high gear nationwide. 

We’ve probably closer to the start than the end of this Trump-driven weave of gerrymandering, unfortunately. You can count on Democracy Docket to cover every step of it.