A GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT WITH JIM CROW

CALIFORNIA'S BALLOT MUST NOT BECOME A GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT WITH JIM CROW

Louisiana v. Callais has turned American redistricting into a knife fight in a courthouse hallway. The Supreme Court said Louisiana did not need to create an additional majority-Black district under the Voting Rights Act, and that the state's race-conscious map was unconstitutional. That ruling did more than strike down one map. It told states that protecting Black voting power can be treated as a constitutional danger, while destroying Black voting power can be dressed up as politics. [1]

California should read that message clearly. The old bargain said: California follows clean-government rules, while other states follow the census, the Voting Rights Act, and basic democratic decency. That bargain has been burned. Southern and Republican-led states are now rushing into the smoke, using Callais as permission to redraw power before voters can punish them. SPLC warned before the ruling that Callais could become a "doomsday device" for minority representation. After the ruling, that language looks less like alarm and more like weather. [2]

This is the moral problem facing California elections: Should a multiracial democracy keep one hand tied behind its back while anti-democratic mapmakers use both fists? California built an independent redistricting model through its Citizens Redistricting Commission, a body designed to draw fair maps without protecting incumbents or parties. That is a civic achievement. But a nation cannot survive when only one side treats fair rules as binding and the other treats rules as raw material. [3]

Proposition 50 was California's emergency answer to that crisis. The Legislative Analyst's Office explained that a "yes" vote meant California would use new legislatively drawn congressional maps starting in 2026, until the independent commission draws new maps after the 2030 Census. The measure also called for federal law and a constitutional amendment requiring fair, independent, nonpartisan redistricting nationwide. In plain language: California voters were asked to fight fire with a firebreak. [4]

The Trump administration should be furious about that. Good. The fury reveals the game. Trump and his allies want red states to redraw maps when it helps them, then scream "gerrymander" when blue states refuse to be sacrificial lambs. They want "colorblindness" to mean blindness to Black power, Latino power, Asian power, Native power, youth power, renter power, worker power, and every coalition that might govern without permission from a white reactionary minority.

The National Urban League is right to call out the fantasy that Callais will somehow make parties compete for minority voters. Competition is not what we are seeing. We are seeing states attempt to eliminate competition by cracking communities, cancelling primaries, moving deadlines, and forcing voters into new districts at the last possible moment. Alabama's post-Callais chaos shows the pattern: courts condemn discrimination, states delay, the Supreme Court blinks, and Black voters pay the bill. [5]

California's duty is not to become pure while others become predatory. California's duty is to become a shield: transparent maps, public hearings, multilingual voter education, clean administration, aggressive registration, strong litigation defense, and a public message sharp enough to cut through the fog. A defensive map must still answer to democracy. The people must see the lines, understand the stakes, and own the decision.

The deeper struggle is not California versus Texas, or Democrats versus Republicans. It is multiracial democracy versus the old machinery of racial control. Callais tells Black voters that their protection is suspect. California must answer that every voter's power is sacred, and no state should be allowed to rig Congress under cover of "neutrality."

Let the administration rage. Let the pundits clutch pearls. The question for California is simple: will the largest multiracial state in the union watch democracy get carved up, or will it stand, vote, organize, and draw the line?

CITATIONS

[1] The Supreme Court's syllabus says the VRA did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district and that no compelling interest justified the challenged race-conscious map.

[2] SPLC described Callais as challenging long-standing Section 2 rules for minority opportunity districts and warned the case could become a "doomsday device" for minority representation.

[3] California's Secretary of State says the state normally uses census data for redistricting, and the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission draws congressional and state legislative boundaries.

[4] The California Legislative Analyst's Office explains Proposition 50's title, the 2026 timing, the independent commission background, and the "yes" vote effect; the Senate analysis said the measure was designed as a response if Texas or another state redistricted without a court order.

[5] The National Urban League argues the ruling leaves Section 2 close to a dead letter and points to post-Callais redistricting moves; The New Yorker reports the Alabama order rewarded a state after lower-court findings of intentional racial discrimination and created election disruption.