The Seattle Times | National redistricting battles hit Washington state and its lawmakers
By Anumita Kaur Shauna Sowersby
WASHINGTON — The landmark Supreme Court decision axing a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana has intensified redistricting battles across the nation, rippling as far as Washington state. The ruling has renewed a Republican challenge to Washington’s new legislative districts while spurring some Democrats to seek new congressional boundaries.
Following the April 29 Supreme Court decision, a group of Washington state Republicans asked a federal court to throw out the legislative map derived from Sotto Palmer v. Hobbs, which redrew districts in 2024 after ruling that Latino voting power had been diluted in the Yakima Valley and Pasco areas. “We believe it affects Sotto Palmer explicitly. It’s the same issues, it’s the same conclusions,” said Jim Walsh, the state GOP chair.
The Supreme Court’s Louisiana decision confirmed “that race may not be used as a predominant factor considered in drawing legislative districts,” the Republican intervenors wrote in their motion filed this month. They contend Washington’s 2024 legislative map rests on an “erroneous legal framework,” and should be tossed and reverted to the prior boundaries drawn by the bipartisan redistricting commission in 2021.
At the same time, as the Supreme Court ruling extends Republican officials’ new ground to redistrict across the nation and bolsters the party’s efforts to control the U.S. House, Democrats in Washington state are weighing whether to redraw congressional districts if they can secure the necessary seats in Olympia. They would be joining other Democratic-led states such as California and Virginia if they do so.
“President (Donald) Trump put out the call to rig the system in order to maintain the Republican majority in Congress, and red states are answering,” Gov. Bob Ferguson told The Seattle Times. “I support efforts to level the playing field. In Washington state, we would need a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate to change our redistricting process. If we get that supermajority, I would not only support a redistricting effort — I would lead it.”
The fervor to reshape legislative — and potentially congressional — boundaries comes months before the consequential 2026 midterm election, as both parties wield redistricting as a high-stakes tool they claim protects electoral fairness in the fight for political power.
Washington state voters shifted map-drawing power from elected officials to a bipartisan redistricting commission in 1983. The commission consists of four voting members — two Democrats and two Republicans — picked by legislative leaders from both parties, plus a nonvoting chair selected by the members. The commission is slated to convene in 2031 to redraw congressional and legislative districts.
Only a two-thirds vote by the state Legislature can trigger redistricting before then — or, in the case of the state’s 2024 legislative map, U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik could grant the Republicans’ recent request to restore the commission’s previous maps.
“How that plays out I think is anybody’s guess … Whether they do it in a timeline that affects the 2026 election is a tougher question,” said state Senate Minority Leader John Braun, R-Centralia, a vocal critic of the redone legislative map. “This is very good news from my perspective for Washington state, and the opportunity to get back to commission-led redistricting.”
From Washington, D.C., Democratic Rep. Marilyn Strickland signaled a concerted fight against nationwide Republican-led redistricting. Strickland, of Tacoma, serves as secretary of the Congressional Black Caucus — a longtime power center among congressional Democrats.
“This is not just about Black Congress members or Black voters — this is an overall national voter suppression effort in general, so this can affect all of us,” Strickland told The Times on Tuesday. “We are not going to take this lying down.”
The Sotto Palmer legislative map
Washington’s legislative map was redrawn two years ago with Central Washington’s Latino voters at the center of the case.
Lasnik approved new legislative district boundaries in March 2024 after ruling that the previous map hindered the ability of Latino voters in the Yakima Valley and Pasco areas in Sotto Palmer V. Hobbs.
The revised map created a Latino-majority 14th Legislative District, which some voting rights advocates applauded as an order cementing the strength of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Democrats celebrated the new map; Republicans, like Braun, slammed it as partisan gerrymandering.
“The map was not drawn or adopted to favor or discriminate against either political party, but rather to unite the Latino community of interest in the Yakima Valley region,” Lasnik wrote at the time.
A separate group of Latino voters backed by conservative groups, acting as “intervenors,” unsuccessfully appealed Lasnik’s 2023 ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court before later challenging the revised map itself.
The recent Supreme Court ruling concerning a Black-majority congressional district in Louisiana, which the court’s conservative majority said relied too heavily on race, breathed new life into the challenge against Washington state’s map. “This is a continuing harm that is inequitable now that the Supreme Court has confirmed the legal foundation for this court’s redistricting orders was erroneous from the outset,” the intervenors wrote in their new motion.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs responded this week by urging the court to not disrupt the current maps before the 2026 elections.
“To change them now, on the eve of the primary election, would make it
exceedingly difficult — if not impossible — to successfully hold the State’s primary election and would also imperil the general election,” Hobbs wrote in his filed response.
The plaintiffs in Sotto Palmer similarly underscored the sensitive timing. “This court should await action, if any, from the Supreme Court,” they wrote.
The intervenors rebutted Wednesday, urging the court to act swiftly: “The court’s redistricting orders prospectively control how the state conducts its elections and, without prompt relief, will be the cause of elections being held under an unconstitutional map,” they wrote. “These are extraordinary circumstances indeed.”
It’s unclear how quickly a decision will be made, and whether that decision would be implemented before November.
Congressional redistricting
Meanwhile, state House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon said he is determined to push for congressional redistricting if state Democrats secure a two-thirds majority in Olympia.
“We’re really alarmed by what we’re seeing across the South,” Fitzgibbon said. “This is continuing around the country, and I think there is a need for us to have a tool to combat what’s going on in Florida and Texas and elsewhere.”
Only two of Washington’s congressional districts are reliably Republican: the Central 4th Congressional District and the Eastern 5th Congressional District.
Parts of these regions may benefit from “a more competitive map,” Fitzgibbon said.
“It’s a question of if we can pick up seven seats in the House and three in the Senate, which happens to be the same number that we picked up during Trump’s first midterm. So that’s a steep hill, but it’s not out of the question,” he said. “And that doesn’t mean every member has signed on, but I think we would have a pathway to getting them to a yes on that.”
Fitzgibbon sponsored legislation earlier this year to allow mid-decade redistricting if another state did so first. That proposal failed, and Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, has indicated he is not interested in joining a redistricting fight, and thinks Democrats won’t gain the needed seats to have a supermajority in the Senate.
Nationally, Strickland and fellow Black caucus members are gearing up to aggressively defend seats across the country at risk due to the flurry of redistricting, Strickland told The Times.
The caucus has a record 62 members spanning the House and Senate — including the potential first Black speaker of the House in Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, of New York — and represents a loyal base of Black voters that has historically been foundational to the Democratic Party. The caucus may be significantly diminished as the spate of redistricting, particularly in the American South, threatens to draw members out of their districts.
“It means that people who live in majority Black districts won’t have someone representing them directly,” Strickland said. Her 10th Congressional District, which stretches from Tacoma to Olympia, is not a majority-minority district. Still, she reiterated, “this affects everyone. It dilutes the power of the vote, it dilutes representation and it suppresses votes.”
The caucus is exploring all avenues to combat the GOP’s redistricting, she said: “Any legal means that we have. Informing and educating folks about this. And we have to mobilize and get people to turn out to vote.”
Perhaps, Strickland said, the redistricting efforts will backfire in that way — an argument the Black caucus has turned to in recent days.
“People are very interested in this election cycle,” she said. “I believe what Republicans are doing is going to increase Black voter turnout, increase minority turnout, increase the turnout of every person who cares about democracy.”