…The Trump administration’s framework would impose new evidentiary requirements on Black voters who sue over how electoral maps are drawn. Among other things, they would need current statistics showing that a legislature discriminated based on race, rather than party affiliation.
In the United States, where more than 80 percent of Black voters back Democratic candidates, decoupling race and party affiliation in such a way is difficult.
The Justice Department’s approach “would make it extremely difficult for Section 2 plaintiffs to win in jurisdictions where you have intense polarization, like you do in the Deep South,” said Travis Crum, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.