Maryland must clear the constitutional path to defend voting rights

By Senate President Bill Ferguson, Sen. Antonio L. Hayes and Sen. Mary L. Washington 

Across the country, the rules of our democracy are being rewritten in real time. Donald Trump pushed Texas to redraw its congressional map to manufacture five new Republican seats. Florida moved to add four more. After the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act this spring, Republican-led states began carving up their maps to lock in power they cannot win at the ballot box. Maryland cannot pretend this is someone else’s problem, and we will not stand still while it happens.

For months there has been a real and difficult debate in Maryland about how to respond. The question was never whether Maryland should act. It was how to act in a way that makes the state stronger instead of risking the representation we already have. Maryland Democrats hold seven of its eight congressional seats today. Protecting those seats mattered, and moving too fast under the wrong legal conditions could have turned the current map into a court-ordered redraw that left us worse off. A symbolic win that collapses in court is not courage, and it is not strategy.

Then the ground shifted.

By eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court opened the door for states to erase the districts that give minority communities a voice in Congress. Republican legislatures across the South are already walking through that door, redrawing maps to dismantle majority-Black districts that took generations to build.

That changed the calculation.

Maryland’s own constitution, under a 2022 court ruling interpreting it, could stand as a real barrier to any new congressional map. The responsible first step is to clear that legal cloud by letting Maryland voters amend the constitution, so the state can act from a position of strength rather than gamble from one of weakness. That is what the upcoming special session is about.

We have already watched what happens when a state moves fast but not carefully. In Virginia, Democrats rushed a mid-decade map to answer the same national threat. Voters approved it. Then the Virginia Supreme Court struck it down, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to revive it, and candidates who had been running in districts that no longer existed had to fold overnight. Virginia ended up back where it started, with nothing to show for the fight. We will not hand Donald Trump that outcome here.

And we will not buy a national victory by weakening Baltimore.

Baltimore is the largest city in Maryland and the civic heart of this state, and it holds a congressional voice anchored here, rooted in generations of Black leadership and civil rights advocacy. That representation is not a bargaining chip. Maps that look clever on paper often get there by slicing a city into pieces and parceling its neighborhoods out to shore up districts somewhere else. Baltimore knows how that story ends. If voters approve the amendment, we will assess where things stand at that point and determine whether and how Maryland should proceed. Any conversation about Maryland’s next map has to begin with a clear principle: Baltimore’s voice must remain strong, and the Baltimore-anchored seat that gives this city real power in Congress must be protected.

Representation is not a math problem. It is whether communities can elect leaders who know them and answer to them. Getting this right means listening to the people whose power is most at stake, Black Baltimoreans, immigrant communities, labor, neighborhood leaders, and voting rights advocates, before any line is drawn, not after.

We are not naive about this moment. The threat from Washington is real, and Maryland will meet it. But we intend to come out the other side stronger, with Baltimore’s power intact and a map that lasts, not one that makes people feel better for a week and fails when it matters most. Maryland should move forward with the amendment. Maryland voters should have the final say. And Baltimore’s voice must be protected through all of it. That is strategy. That is how you fight to win. Baltimore has too much at stake for anything less.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.

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