The Supreme Court's Callais Decision and its Impact on California

On April 29, 2026 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, and the short version is this: Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the federal law that has protected voters from unfair maps for sixty years, has been significantly narrowed.

For decades, if a district map had the effect of diluting the voices of minority voters, those voters could go to court. After Callais, plaintiffs now have to prove the people who drew the map intended to discriminate based on race. That is an extraordinarily high bar, and very few cases will clear it. Justice Sotomayor put it bluntly in her dissent: Section 2 has been left a dead letter.

The Voting Rights Act is one of the most important civil rights achievements in American history. Sixty years of work, much of it shared work that our coalition partners and many of you have been part of, built and defended the protections that just got narrowed. None of that is erased by one ruling. But the terrain we are all working on has changed, and the honest answer is that things may get harder before they get easier.

Here in California, the impact could reach every level of government. Many cities and counties moved from at-large to single-member districts under the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) so minority communities could actually elect representatives of their choice. UCLA law professor Richard Hasen called the decision "an earthquake" and pointed to Palmdale and Santa Monica as places where lawsuits could come first.

The state and federal districts are also in play. California's independent redistricting commission was told by its legal advisors, after both the 2010 and 2020 censuses, that the federal Voting Rights Act required it to maximize opportunities for communities of color to elect representatives. That mandate shaped today's congressional and state legislative maps. After Callais, the legal foundation under that mandate is substantially smaller. The Prop 50 congressional maps voters approved last fall could face new challenges. And when the commission redraws lines after the 2030 census, it will be working with much weaker legal protections than it has ever had before.

This is why the work we do together matters more, not less, after Callais.

Instead of carving a jurisdiction into single-member districts where one group barely outvotes another, voters in a multi-member district can rank candidates in order of preference, and seats are awarded in proportion to how people actually voted. This is called proportional ranked choice voting (PRCV), and it is already recognized by the California Supreme Court as a permitted remedy under the CVRA. A community that makes up a quarter of the electorate can elect roughly a quarter of the seats. Because representation flows from how voters vote rather than from where lines are drawn, gerrymandering loses most of its power. Black; Latino; Asian American; urban; rural; large parties; small parties. Each can find a voice without being pitted against one another in a winner-take-all contest.

Cal RCV has been working to pass both RCV and PRCV around the state, most recently with extensive testimony and grassroots organizing at the Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission.

That is the durable solution. And it is exactly what our work in cities across California is building toward, one campaign at a time. Every city or county that adopts ranked choice voting or proportional ranked choice voting is laying a piece of the foundation for fair representation that does not depend on a federal floor that just got lower. That's why the work in Los Angeles, Sacramento, and elsewhere is so important.

For now, the most important thing you can do is stay engaged. Sign up for Cal RCV updates. Share it with people in your community who care about fair representation. Show up when we ask. The work of building something stronger now happens in the states, and California is one of the most important places in the country for that work to take root.