Redistricting litigation has entered a new era. In 2020, for the first time, state legislatures completed post-census redistricting without preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). After Shelby County v. Holder, plaintiffs challenging unlawful maps must rely upon private litigation alone. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has resuscitated the Purcell Principle, an equitable election law doctrine that prohibits federal courts from changing election rules on the eve of a political contest. Both Shelby County and Purcell present independent problems for voting rights. But at their intersection lies perhaps the most important change in redistricting jurisprudence in half a century: redistricting immunity.

By extending Purcell to redistricting, the Supreme Court has invented a new blanket immunity for state legislatures to enact discriminatory districts. Without Section 5 preclearance, Purcell places litigants in an impossible temporal bind by denying them sufficient time to challenge illegal maps before the next election. As a result, state legislatures are incentivized to enact discriminatory redistricting schemes because legislators know those maps will be immune for at least the first election following decennial redistricting—accounting for no less than one in five federal elections.

This Article introduces the concept of redistricting immunity to the election law literature. New litigation data demonstrate how redistricting immunity works, what causes it, and why it poses a threat to multiracial democracy in the United States. Ultimately, redistricting immunity inverts two core institutional arrangements in our federal structure. It elevates state law over federal law, posing a basic threat to federal supremacy, and it empowers courts over Congress, raising concerns about democratic legitimacy. This Article concludes by offering solutions for courts, legislatures, and litigants. Only with the consequences of redistricting immunity in clear view can courts, legislatures, and litigants remedy this new immunity that has dangerously eroded the voting rights protections the “Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy.”