The 2026 House map has been flipped upside down by a massive Supreme Court decision Wednesday to overturn the parts of the Voting Rights Act, as Democrats remain ready to fight.

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to race-based redistricting, finding that Louisiana’s second black-majority congressional district was created in violation of the Constitution, without fully gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This ruling could allow more Republican states to redistrict, after redistricting wars have swept across the country and Democrats were poised to take the House in November. 

“I wish I could say I’m surprised at what the Supreme Court does, but I’m not,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, told the Washington Examiner. 

“I know that we in the CBC are going to continue to fight,” Meeks said. “We’re not going to sit down and lay down and die. We’re going to rally our folks together and people and turn them out to vote.”

The court case stems from a challenge by a group of voters who identified as “non-African American” to a 2024 redistricting map adopted after a federal court invalidated the prior map for violating the VRA. While the state’s revised map added a second majority-black district to address those concerns, the court ultimately found, in a 6-3 decision, that the configuration crossed the line, ruling that the new map constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

“This case may have been brought by those who seek to suppress the votes of millions of Americans, but those schemes will backfire,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairwoman Suzan DelBene (D-WA) said in a statement. “Despite this corrupt and targeted assault on the voting rights of Black and Brown Americans from the Supreme Court, Democrats remain poised to retake the House Majority in November – when we will recommit ourselves to the ‘Good Trouble’ of ensuring that every voice is heard and receives fair representation.”

This decision comes as both Democratic and Republican states have been in an all-out, nationwide redistricting war since Texas led a Trump-backed redistricting effort last year, leading other Democratic and Republican states to follow suit. 

While many states have already passed the deadlines to alter their maps for the 2026 midterm elections, a handful of states are expected to begin redistricting efforts in response to this decision. 

“Many of them may not be able to [redistrict] this late in the game, but I could start imagining several Republican states doing redistricting soon in response to this, but we’re still looking through the decision to see the implications,” Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA) told the Washington Examiner.

“In Virginia, I feel vindicated that we did mid-decade redistricting because we knew they’re gonna try,” he expressed after Virginia voted last week to redraw the state’s congressional maps to pick up four Democratic seats. 

While Democrats have been looking at what this decision means and pledging to fight, Republicans have celebrated. 

“For too long, activists have manipulated the redistricting process to achieve political outcomes, dividing Americans instead of bringing them together,” National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC) said in a statement. “This ruling restores fairness, strengthens confidence in our elections, and ensures every voter is treated equally under the law.”

As many as 12 Democratic congressional districts could be redrawn into Republican ones, with the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling in Thornburg v. Gingles now effectively ended as a legal standard, according to an analysis by the New York Times.

Kaelan Deese contributed to this article.