Dace Potas, DePaul Political Science Grad, Solves Gerrymandering by Declaring That Two Motives Cannot Share an Uber
USA TODAY Opinion: Because Nothing Says "Serious Constitutional Analysis" Like a Colorful Map Next to the Weather Report
Dace Potas wrote an opinion piece that sounds reasonable if you do not look too closely. He wants Americans to believe that partisan gerrymandering and racial gerrymandering are two separate problems, that only Congress can fix the partisan kind, and that the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais is just a neutral attempt to keep the two separate. Every one of those claims collapses under the weight of the facts. Motives can overlap. When state legislators crack a Black community into pieces to help their party win, they are doing both things at once, and pretending otherwise is not honest constitutional analysis. It is a failure to look at the evidence. It is also an insult to Black and brown voters, who are supposed to believe that their diminished representation is just politics and not racism, as if the two cannot ride in the same car.
The Receipts: What Actually Happened in Louisiana
Here is what actually happened. After the 2020 census, Louisiana drew a congressional map with only one majority-Black district out of six, even though roughly one-third of the state’s population is African American. A federal court found that map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars election practices that result in minority voters having less opportunity than others to elect representatives of their choice. Ordered to fix the problem, the legislature created a second majority-Black district in 2024. Then a group of voters who described themselves as non-African American sued, claiming the new district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court agreed in a 6-3 decision and struck down the district (Howe, 2026).
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the Republican-appointed majority, ruled that because Section 2 did not actually require Louisiana to create a second majority-Black district, the state had no compelling interest to use race in drawing the map. To prove a violation of Section 2 now, he wrote, plaintiffs must “disentangle race from politics” and show that race, rather than partisan goals, “drove a district’s lines” (Kagan, 2026). Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented. She pointed out that Congress explicitly rejected this exact standard more than forty years ago. In 1980, the Court’s decision in City of Mobile v. Bolden required proof of racist intent to win a vote-dilution case. Congress amended Section 2 in 1982 to overturn that decision because lawmakers knew states would always have a “non-racial rationalization” handy, and requiring proof of intent would kill legitimate claims (Kagan, 2026). By bringing that dead standard back to life, Kagan argued, the majority did not “update” the law. It gutted it.
When Your Partisan Map Just Happens to Erase Black Voters
Potas claims this is all nonpartisan housekeeping. He is wrong, and the math is simple. In much of the country, especially the South, race and party preference are tightly linked. Black voters overwhelmingly support Democrats, and white voters overwhelmingly support Republicans. Justice Alito himself acknowledged this fact in his opinion (Howe, 2026). That means a legislature that wants to hurt Black voters can usually do so by hurting Democrats, then pointing to the partisan label as a shield. The Native American Rights Fund, along with a coalition of civil rights groups, made this exact point in a 2023 brief in another redistricting case. They explained that party and race have long served as proxies for each other, and that state legislatures draw maps that racially gerrymander voters of color while claiming they are only sorting by political affiliation (Native American Rights Fund, 2023). The Supreme Court had previously recognized that this tactic is unconstitutional. Callais changes the rules so the tactic now wins.
Potas also says Democrats are just as guilty of gerrymandering as Republicans. Even if that were true, it misses the point. The question is not which party misbehaves more. The question is whether a map can simultaneously serve a partisan goal and produce a racially discriminatory result. Callais gives state lawmakers a straightforward recipe to dilute Black voting power. Step one is to announce that your goal is partisan. Step two is to point out that the minority community you are cracking or packing votes for the other party. Step three is to watch the federal courts fold their hands because the plaintiffs cannot prove race was the sole driver. As Justice Kagan noted, assuming a state leaves behind no smoking-gun evidence of a race-based motive, Section 2 will now play no role (Kagan, 2026). That is not a neutral rule. It is a cheat code for states where racial polarization is highest, and those states are predominantly in the South with Republican-controlled legislatures.
The Geography of Convenient Timing
There is nothing nonpartisan about the timing or the effect. The decision arrived in late April, two months earlier than the Court’s most contentious rulings usually appear, giving Republican state legislatures extra time to redraw maps before the 2026 elections (Millhiser, 2026). Within days, Alabama and other states were positioned to eliminate majority-Black districts they had previously been ordered to draw. If the ruling were truly just about abstract constitutional boundaries, it would not function as a practical gift to one party. But it does, because under the new test, a state can defend against a racial vote-dilution claim simply by proving its map also benefits the ruling party. The most racially polarized states now enjoy the highest level of immunity from lawsuits challenging their maps. That is not an accident of scheduling. That is the sound of a starting gun.
Congress Already Fixed This. The Court Unfixed It.
Potas ends by saying only Congress can stop partisan map wars. That is a convenient escape hatch. Congress already addressed this problem. It did so in 1982 when it amended the Voting Rights Act to bar election practices that result in racial discrimination no matter what excuse a state legislature offers. The Senate Report accompanying that amendment specifically warned that even when state actors had purposefully discriminated, they would be able to offer a non-racial rationalization supported by official resolutions and legislative history that denied any racial motive. Congress deliberately chose to stop that evasion by making the law turn on what actually happens to minority voters, not on what legislators claim they were thinking (Kagan, 2026). That was Congress’s answer to the very problem Potas now pretends Congress never solved. When a legislature cracks a Black neighborhood into pieces because those voters support the other party, the injury is racial vote dilution dressed in partisan clothing. The Voting Rights Act’s results test was designed to catch exactly that maneuver. By requiring plaintiffs to prove that race rather than politics was the predominant motive, the Callais majority did not protect constitutional boundaries. It protected a partisan weapon. It made a mockery of the law Congress crafted specifically to stop states from using partisanship as a legal shield for racial discrimination.
Telling voters to wait for a gridlocked Congress while their districts are dismantled is not a solution. It is an excuse. The Constitution and the Voting Rights Act exist to protect real people, not to protect abstract categories. When a Black neighborhood is split into six pieces so its residents can never elect a candidate who represents them, the harm is the same whether the legislator used a red pen or a blue pen to draw the line. Dace Potas asks us to pretend we cannot see both motives at once. The evidence says we must.
To watch a columnist prove that racism and partisanship are mutually exclusive while standing on a district map that does both, the original performance is here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/05/05/supreme-court-ruling-partisan-redistricting-us-elections/89925187007/
Works Cited
Howe, A. (2026, April 29). In major Voting Rights Act case, Supreme Court strikes down redistricting map challenged as racially discriminatory. SCOTUS blog. https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/04/in-major-voting-rights-act-case-supreme-court-strikes-down-redistricting-map-challenged-as-racia/
Kagan, E. (2026, April 29). Dissenting opinion. In Louisiana v. Callais, Nos. 24-109 and 24-110. Supreme Court of the United States. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/24-109_2026-04-29
Millhiser, I. (2026, April 29). The Voting Rights Act is all but dead. Prepare for maximum gerrymandering. Vox. https://www.vox.com/politics/487363/supreme-court-louisiana-callais-gerrymandering-alito-voting-rights-act
Native American Rights Fund. (2023, October 10). Partisan aims cannot excuse racial gerrymandering. https://narf.org/partisan-aims-cannot-excuse-racial-gerrymandering/
Potas, D. (2026, May 5). Republicans’ redistricting push is partisan, not race-based. USA TODAY. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/05/05/supreme-court-ruling-partisan-redistricting-us-elections/89925187007/