An unexpected Supreme Court ruling could deliver Democrats the House of Representatives in 2024, as its support of the Voting Rights Act could put Republicans on the back foot in more districts.

The high court on Thursday issued a 5-to-4 ruling in Allen v. Milligan ordering the state of Alabama to redraw its congressional maps and create a second Black-majority House district.

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in delivering a decision reaffirming the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The justices found that Alabama lawmakers had violated the act because lawmakers had chosen to only create one majority-Black district when they could have made two in a state where more than a quarter of the population is Black.

The decision will likely reverberate across the South, with immediate implications in Louisiana, North Carolina, and Alabama’s ongoing redistricting sagas, though it could have implications in states like Georgia, Florida, New York, and Wisconsin as well.

In Alabama, the ruling will almost certainly deliver Democrats a relatively safe seat in the form of the new majority-Black district. The editors of the Cook Political Report immediately noted five districts where they expect the ruling to favor Democrats as well.

The editors moved their ratings for Alabama’s first and second districts as well as Louisiana’s fifth and sixth districts to “toss up” from “solid” Republican seats. They also moved North Carolina’s first district to a “lean” Democratic seat from a “toss up.”

“Politically, the ruling could shake up the 2024 battle for the House, send shockwaves beyond Alabama and potentially offset a new gerrymander Republicans are likely to impose in North Carolina,” a Cook Political Report senior editor, Dave Wasserman, wrote. “The key states to watch are Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina.”

While the specifics of the changes in states like Georgia and South Carolina will determine their influence on the 2024 maps, these five seats alone will stretch Republican resources in defending their House majority in 2024.

As it stands, Republicans maintain a narrow 222 to 213 majority over Democrats in the House of Representatives. This means that Democrats only need to net five seats in 2024 to retake the majority.

Beyond the seats that will shift due to the ruling, Republicans are already going to be on the defensive in the 14 districts they represent that were carried by President Biden in the 2020 election.

In some of these districts, like the suburban New York districts the GOP carried, Republicans benefited from lower voter turnout in the midterm elections — a circumstance that may not repeat itself in 2024.

While it’s clear that the Supreme Court decision was good news for voting rights advocates and for Democrats looking to take back the House majority, questions remain about the degree to which the decision benefits Democrats.

The editors at Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics only moved one seat in Alabama to the Democratic column from Republican in 2024. 

An associate editor there, Miles Coleman, tells the Sun that this isn’t because they necessarily disagree with Mr. Wasserman’s ratings but rather they are waiting to see the new map before they move the ratings for more seats.

An election handicapping organization that analyzes elections from a  conservative perspective, RRH Elections, wrote that “the broader implications of the decision are less clear” in the Supreme Court decision, adding that the decision makes the Voting Rights Act “jurisprudence clear as mud.”

There are also situations, like in suburban New York, where the recent decision probably doesn’t change the redistricting dynamic drastically, given that these districts are heavily white.

Mr. Coleman’s ultimate conclusion on the matter is that the decision was “unquestionably great news for voting rights advocates and Democrats,” but that the question of exactly how good it will be for Democrats is up in the air.