What to know about the latest wave of changes to congressional districts

The remaking of America’s political map gathered pace this week in courts and legislatures, all this cycle expected to boost Republicans in their bid to maintain control of Congress in November’s elections.

This week’s major action took place in the Southern states, with a major state court ruling in Virginia and continued fallout from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month.

Here’s an overview of the situation.

In a 4-3 decision Friday, the Virginia Supreme Court upheld the Democratic congressional redistricting plan that was approved by voters in April.

The new map aimed to give Democrats a preferred path to 10 of the state’s 11 seats in the House of Representatives — a jump from the six they currently hold. The new lines were drawn as part of a push by both parties to redistribute districts to their advantage in time for the 2026 midterm elections.

The court’s majority cited procedural reasons to reject the amendment to the state constitution that paved the way for new maps. To send a constitutional amendment to voters, lawmakers are required to approve the measure twice: once before and once after a legislative election. The court found that they had not complied with this decision because the initial approval was obtained in October, after early voting for the general election began.

The result is that the state’s old maps will remain in place for this year’s elections.

Several GOP-controlled Southern states pushed this week to redraw their congressional maps following an April 29 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Louisiana congressional district intended to have a majority of black voters.

The move was seen as a blow to a provision of the Voting Rights Act that requires political maps to include districts where candidates favored by minority populations can win elections.

Louisiana quickly suspended primaries scheduled for May 16 so lawmakers could create new districts. Voting rights activists have packed the Statehouse to oppose proposed new maps that could eliminate at least one of the two current majority-black districts.

Alabama Republicans passed legislation Friday that would ignore the results of the May 19 congressional primary and instead hold a new election — if a federal court agrees to lift an order under which the state would have a second congressional district where the majority or near-majority of residents are black. Republicans currently hold four of the state’s six seats in the House and instead want to use a map that could allow them to pick up an additional seat.

South Carolina’s GOP-dominated Legislature met Friday to discuss a proposal to create a new map that gives the party a chance to win the state’s seven seats in the House. But some worry that dissolving the one Democratic-controlled district could leave some other districts vulnerable to Democratic electoral victories.

Tennessee signed into law Thursday a law creating a new map in the U.S. House of Representatives that splits a majority-black district in Memphis, the only one now held by a Democrat. That would give Republicans a strong chance of winning all nine of the state’s seats.

Normally, house districts are only redrawn after the results of the decennial U.S. Census are counted.

This time it’s different.

President Donald Trump urged Texas officials to draw new districts to boost his chances of maintaining GOP control of Congress after the 2026 midterm elections. Texas officials complied with a plan to bring them up to five new seats.

California, dominated by Democrats, responded with a map intended to bring them five new states. Other states followed. And in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, the pace has picked up, although this has mostly happened in states where Republicans already hold almost all the seats and therefore don’t have much room to improve.

Not counting possible map changes underway in Alabama, Louisiana and South Carolina, mid-decade redistricting created 14 additional House seats that Republicans believe they can win and six that could give Democrats an advantage. Overall, this would mean a potential advantage of eight seats for the Republican Party before the midterm elections, when the president’s party normally loses seats.

But as changes and legal challenges occur – and voters have their say – the results are not certain.

Currently, Republicans have 217 seats in the House, compared to 212 for Democrats. There is one independent member. Five seats are vacant.