Illinois lawmakers punt remap amendment after SCOTUS Voting Rights Act ruling [View all]

Source: CBS News

April 29, 2026 / 5:55 PM CDT


Illinois lawmakers are not planning to pursue a constitutional amendment on redistricting after a key U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday. Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, told Capitol News Illinois that Senate Democrats decided not to call an amendment that passed House last week after the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a hefty blow the federal Voting Rights Act. If approved by voters, it would have rewritten the state's redistricting rules.

"We want to spend a little bit of time unpacking the Supreme Court decision to make sure we get it right and protect the voting rights of Illinois residents," Harmon said. "It's much better and much more important to get this correct than to do it quickly. The worst thing that would happen is if we rushed and there were unintended consequences that undermine people's voting rights." But that means the matter will have to wait until at least 2028, as lawmakers faced a May 3 deadline to approve constitutional amendments for voters to consider in November.

The proposed amendment would have inserted a provision from the Voting Rights Act into the state constitution to specifically direct lawmakers to consider race in drawing district lines. The Voting Rights Act provision has long been interpreted as a ban on splitting large minority groups into multiple legislative districts to dilute their voting power.

The U.S. Supreme Court, however, struck down Louisiana's congressional map on Wednesday, ruling a district drawn to consolidate Black voters was illegally gerrymandered based on race. While the decision did not broadly eliminate the section of the Voting Rights Act, dissenting liberal Justice Elena Kagan suggested it is "all but a dead letter."

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/illinois-senate-redistricting-supreme-court-ruling-voting-rights-act/