Hey, Arizona!

It’s been a wild week of breaking news — and the biggest update came from the nation’s highest court, which issued a ruling yesterday weakening a key section of the Voting Rights Act.

That section has long been used to require mapmakers to consider whether district lines give minority voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. Under the court’s decision, the law technically remains intact, but it now applies in significantly narrowed circumstances, making it much harder to challenge political maps for being racially discriminatory.

It’s hard to overstate the impact that the decision could have nationally. The change is likely to result in quick, mid-decade redistricting action in certain GOP-led states where that process is controlled by politicians. It will especially affect states across the American South, where the landmark law led mapmakers to draw new congressional districts largely consisting of Black Americans.

Here in Arizona, legal and political experts told me the impact will be more muted, and likely less immediate. Still, the decision is likely to change how our state’s independent redistricting commission, or IRC, draws its voting maps.

Some politicians are already signaling that they could sue over our state’s existing congressional and legislative district boundaries. Experts said any such challenge is unlikely to succeed, and certainly won’t resolve before this year’s midterm election. But if such a lawsuit prevailed, it could force mid-decade redistricting.

Regardless, the ruling is near certain to ripple into our state’s next redistricting cycle. When the IRC reconvenes to draw new maps at the end of the decade, it will have much more free rein to draw whatever lines it pleases — even if those new boundaries chip away at minority groups’ collective voting power.

The experts who spoke with me weren’t entirely aligned on how far-reaching the decision’s impact could be in Arizona and exactly which districts could see changes.

But, broadly speaking, we could potentially see shifts in our state’s two minority-majority congressional districts, CD3 and CD7. Democrats could potentially pick up seats if the parts of those districts were divided into surrounding, more competitive ones, such as CD1 and CD6.

It’s also worth keeping an eye on whether boundaries significantly change in several minority-majority legislative districts statewide, like LD6, which covers nine distinct tribal communities in the northern part of the state, or LD20, which encompasses heavily Latino neighborhoods in Glendale and Phoenix. Republicans could end up with gains in future legislative maps.

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In the meantime, let me know what I should look into next. You can reach me anytime at [email protected].

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