Perhaps the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee knew what was coming. As an early proponent of a federal bill banning mid-decade gerrymandering, she now appears to have been ahead of her time. Indeed, today, no fewer than seven bills in Congress bear her legacy of concern for fair representation in redistricting. That’s more than any other time in modern congressional history.
The story of the current gerrymandering war flows through her home state of Texas. The legal fight over congressional maps after the 2010 census was complicated; the U.S. Supreme Court struck down several sets of maps as racial gerrymanders.
As a Black member of Congress from Houston, Jackson Lee understood the importance of sponsoring legislation to counteract partisan and racial gerrymanders more than a decade ago. Not long after the U.S. Supreme Court ended preclearance protections in 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder decision, Rep. Jackson Lee introduced the Coretta Scott King Mid-Decade Redistricting Prohibition Act of 2013. The act would have banned states from engaging in congressional redistricting mid-decade, rather than the traditional timeline of redistricting only when new census data is available at the start of each decade.
With that bill, Rep. Jackson Lee sought to prevent the vote dilution of Black and Latino voters who, before the Shelby County decision, had been protected by Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Those provisions required many jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to obtain federal approval before their new district maps would take effect.
The Jackson Lee bill surely drew inspiration from the Fairness and Independence in Redistricting Act of 2005, introduced by Rep. John Tanner of Tennessee. Unfortunately, the legal playing field regarding redistricting would only get worse: In the 2019 case Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court removed the federal judiciary from striking down political gerrymanders.
Jackson Lee reintroduced her bill each Congress until she passed away in office last year. A mere 13 months after her death, however, the Texas Legislature passed a new congressional map in the middle of the decade with the explicit intent to engage in racial gerrymandering. This set off a domino effect across the country: Nearly half a dozen states have either passed or taken official steps toward mid-decade redistricting in response.
Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have taken note of this spiraling mess: To date, at least Rep. Marc Veasey, Rep. Kevin Kiley, Rep. Steve Cohen, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Rep. Donald Davis, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, and Rep. Deborah Ross have introduced bills in reaction to, and aiming to control, this year’s unprecedented mid-decade gerrymandering war.
While all these efforts deserve to be commended and supported, they cannot get past the reality that gerrymandering – whether racial or partisan – will continue to blight our democracy so long as we use single-member districts to elect members of Congress. The efforts may constrain or temporarily pause the gerrymandering war, but they won’t solve it.
In contrast, Rep. Don Beyer’s Fair Representation Act – which would enact ranked choice voting with multi-member districts for the U.S. House – would be a lasting solution to our historic spiral of partisan dysfunction. In addition to delivering a more proportional House that would be nearly impossible to gerrymander, the Fair Representation Act includes a ban on mid-decade redistricting.
As we get closer to the 2026 midterm elections, there is no clear end to the gerrymandering wars; rather, they have spilled back into the courts. Texas’s opening move has been ruled a racial gerrymander by a federal district court, in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The Department of Justice has sued California over its proposed new map, alleging that it is a racial gerrymander. The Supreme Court will soon adjudicate these cases in some fashion.
And while no one can predict how the Court will rule, it is hard to see a resolution that delivers fairer and better representation for We the People. As Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee knew, along with those following in her footsteps on both sides of the aisle, It doesn’t have to be this way.
Ryan J. Suto is the Senior Policy Advisor at FairVote, a nonpartisan organization seeking better elections for all.
