Yesterday, May 12, 2026, I received an e-mail from progressive commentator Brian Tyler Cohen entitled "The Supreme Court Drops All Pretense of Fairness"
Cohen makes the point that regarding redistricting, because the Supreme Court is showing favor to the conservative cause, and because red states are redrawing their maps (as a result of the recent Louisiana v. Callais decision), Democrats in blue states need to follow suit and start redrawing their maps also.
If you've been following my political posts on this HWR website, you know that I'm a huge fan of Cohen. I listen to his YouTube podcasts almost every day.
Subscribe to Brian Tyler Cohen's YouTube channel here.
Today, May 13, 2026, I received an e-mail from March Elias which discusses the same topic.
Here's the full text of Cohen's e-mail (bold added for emphasis). The full text of Elias's e-mail follows (bold added for emphasis):
The Supreme Court Drops All Pretense of Fairness
The Supreme Court spent years telling us it couldn't change the maps too close to an election. Then it tore them up in the middle of one.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN
MAY 12
Let's travel back in time to January 2022, when the Supreme Court did something that would seem unfathomable today: it ruled in favor of Black voters in Alabama. The Justices found that the state had illegally packed Black voters - more than a quarter of Alabama's entire electorate - into just one of Alabama's seven congressional districts. Black voters were set to get a second opportunity district. Huge win.
Well, almost.
While the Supreme Court did rule in favor of drawing a second Black opportunity district, it forced Alabama to use the illegal maps anyway. The reason: it was too close to the election. They relied on a doctrine called the Purcell principle, which says that courts can't make changes too close to an election because of the disruption it might cause to voters. Justices Kavanaugh and Alito put it in writing: "Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others."
In 2022, Black voters in Alabama went to the polls using maps the courts had already ruled were illegal. The disruption of correcting an injustice, the Court decided, was worse than the injustice itself.
Same, But Different
Fast forward to November 2025. This time, Black and Latino voters in Texas score their own win: the Supreme Court found that Texas' congressional map was an unconstitutional gerrymander. I bet you can guess what happened next.
Two weeks later, despite the win, the Supreme Court blocked the implementation of a new map. Same reasoning, nearly identical language. In offering relief in the form of a new map, the district court had "improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections."
The Texas primary was in March 2026. Four months away.
>b>Two states. Two illegal maps. Two wins for minority voters. Both erased by the same Court invoking the same doctrine about the same thing: we cannot disrupt an upcoming election, even to correct a wrong, even with four months to spare.
Cut To
On April 29, 2026, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Callais, gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act, the last major federal protection against racially discriminatory maps. Five days later, on May 4, the Court did something it refused to do in Alabama or Texas: it made the judgment effective immediately, bypassing the standard 32-day window that exists specifically to allow parties to seek clarification or rehearing.
No mention of the "unanticipated and unfair consequences." No mention of "confusion." No mention of "upsetting the delicate balance." All their words, not mine.
At the moment the Supreme Court acted, more than 104,000 Louisiana voters had already cast early ballots. Another 42,000 absentee ballots had been submitted when Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry ultimately suspended the congressional primaries altogether.
The same Supreme Court that told Black voters in Alabama and Texas that they'd have to live with illegal maps because a primary was four months away had no problem blowing up an ongoing election in Louisiana.
The Rule Is: There Are No Rules
There's a pattern here. The Purcell principle exists when it protects one set of voters. It disappears when it protects another. Every procedural precaution is taken when the beneficiaries are white Republicans. No such precautions exist when the beneficiaries are Black, Brown, or Democratic.
This is not an oversight or a coincidence. It is the point.
What should be clear by this point is that the Supreme Court justices are not neutral arbiters of the law. They never were and they aren't now. Just as the Republicans are not partners in democracy. They never were and they aren't now. To that end, we get nowhere conferring goodwill to the other side. As I write in my new book, The Day After, about this antiquated notion of compromising with a party that is wholly disinterested in bipartisanship:
How have Republicans managed to skew democracy so much? Because they pursue power over principle, whereas too many Democrats pursue fairness and good government. Republicans controlled the drawing of 191 of the districts in 2024, compared to only 75 controlled by Democrats. The rest of the House districts were drawn by commissions, courts, or divided state governments. In the Democratic strongholds of California and New York, there are independent redistricting commissions. In Texas and Florida, there is no such thing. In Republican- controlled districts, there is little legal recourse to correct the maps. In their largely conservative courts, the judges often refrain from interfering with map schemes— unlike the mostly liberal courts reviewing maps in Democratic districts.
I wrote The Day After as a blueprint for how to fight back— how to actually wield power effectively when we get it, while we still have the chance to wield it. If you'd like to support my work and amplify this message, I ask that you please pre-order a copy here.
Now is the time to use every tool at our disposal, because winning is existential. If Republicans are gerrymandering Democrats out of existence in every state they control, we absolutely must fight back. That means Democrats in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Colorado, Illinois, Washington, and Oregon need to start the process of redrawing their maps. And I understand that it's not good government, but if we lean on good government solutions, we're going to good government ourselves into obscurity. We gain nothing by sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that none of this is happening. The only way we actually emerge from this with our democracy intact is if we fight hard and fight to win.
Tuesday, May 12
Democracy Docket
Yesterday was another terrible day for voting rights. Ten days before the Alabama primary election, the Supreme Court stripped Black voters of a congressional district they had won in court. I was not surprised. I was outraged.
Acting on an emergency petition by Alabama, the Court vacated an injunction against a congressional map that had been found to violate the Constitution. It did so on the shadow docket, without full briefing or oral argument — the same procedural shortcut the Court has increasingly used to put its thumb on the scale against voting rights.
This was not the inevitable result of the Callais case, nor was it preordained by some newly developed legal doctrine. The decision ultimately required the Court to ignore the constitutional rights of Black voters — and to apply a blatant double standard about when, and for whom, courts may alter congressional maps close to an election.
The facts speak for themselves.
In February 2022, when Black voters in Alabama faced an unconstitutional map that denied them two congressional districts, the Supreme Court said it was too close to the May primary to provide relief. Yet last week, when Alabama asked the Court to eliminate one of those same districts, the Court approved the request — with the primary election only 10 days away.
The Court took similar action in Callais, expediting the effect of its ruling to allow Louisiana to cancel an ongoing congressional election. As a result, the state was able to redraw its maps to remedy what the Court found were violations of white voters' constitutional rights.
Together, these decisions reveal the same pattern: urgency for white voters, delay for Black voters.
At the heart of these cases is the Purcell principle — the idea that courts should avoid changing voting or election rules too close to an election. It is a doctrine with no grounding in law or the Constitution, and one that conservatives on the Supreme Court have wielded all too often to advantage white voters and Republicans at the expense of Black voters and Democrats.
To be honest, the Purcell principle never made sense. It lacks clear standards, consistent application, and constitutional foundation.
In its original form, it was aimed at preventing court orders that "result in voter confusion and consequent incentive to remain away from the polls." But it rapidly expanded into something far broader: a tool to block any court order that might protect voting rights near an election, while allowing anti-voting measures to proceed unchallenged.
Consider what the Court did during the 2020 presidential primaries. As the attorney for the Democratic National Committee, I sought to expand voting by mail in Wisconsin, while the Republican National Committee fought to limit it — at the height of a deadly pandemic, without a reliable test, treatment or vaccine.
After we won a hard-fought case, the Supreme Court deployed Purcell to reverse it, writing that courts "should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election."
I was struck at the time by the word "ordinarily." If there was ever an extraordinary circumstance, it was a statewide election held in April 2020 while COVID was raging.
But I also noticed something else: the Court specified this was only a limitation on lower federal courts. That made no sense then, and it makes no sense now. If last-minute changes to election rules harm voters and election officials, the injury is no lesser when the order comes from the Supreme Court itself.
The Court was quietly carving out a permission structure for itself — one it has since used aggressively.
In the 2022 Alabama redistricting case, the plaintiffs believed they were clear of any Purcell concern. Unlike in Wisconsin, the case was not decided on the eve of an election. By the time the unconstitutional map was enjoined, Election Day was still nearly four months away. The primary had barely begun.
Yet the Supreme Court blocked the Black voters' victory anyway. Writing for three justices, Justice Brett Kavanaugh held that "when an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled," and that "late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences."
Then, in December 2025, the Court blocked another victory, striking down Texas's new congressional map, in part because the district court had "improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign." At the time, the Texas congressional primary was still three months away.
The pattern is unmistakable. In case after case, the window in which courts may act to protect Democrats and Black voters has been shrunk to nearly nothing. Meanwhile, the Court has moved with urgency to protect maps that favor white voters and Republican candidates, even when doing so required acting closer to an election than it had previously deemed acceptable.
It is impossible to view this honestly without concluding that the Court has not been applying a neutral principle. It has been choosing sides.
The Purcell principle was always a legal fiction applied selectively. But we are now beyond mere inconsistency. The Court has used the Purcell principle to erode any trust that there is any principle at all.
I realize that few lawyers want to name what is happening as bluntly as I have. They fear blowback or disapproval from other lawyers and the legal establishment.
But ignoring reality doesn't make the problem disappear. The Supreme Court has decided, case by case, that the Constitution's guarantee of equal political power does not apply equally to everyone. That is a crisis for the court and our democracy.
The Purcell principle didn't create this crisis. The Supreme Court did — and Purcell has become its weapon of choice.