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After months of pressure from national Republicans, Gov. Mike Braun this week called a special legislative session to redraw the state’s Congressional districts.
The goal for President Donald Trump and his allies is for Republican supermajorities in Indiana to redraw the state’s maps to buoy Republicans’ chances of keeping control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections.
There’s a number of logistical and legal questions redistricting faces, the most pressing of which is whether Republicans have enough votes to push new maps through.
Beyond a whip count, it’s right now unknown when the Legislature will actually convene, whether the maps can be completed in time and, most importantly, whether the maps would stand up in court.
Political observers and legal experts say while some of the answers boil down to individual lawmakers, federal courts are likely to loom large in the redistricting fight.
“We’re in some new territory with this special session,” said Paul Helmke, director of the Civic Leaders Center at Indiana University’s Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
Maps and meetings
Under normal circumstances, states only redraw their Congressional maps once per decade when new data from the U.S. Census comes out.
According to political observers, Indiana has only redrawn congressional districts mid-decade once—in the 1960s following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case which decided state legislative districts had to be of roughly the same size based on population.
Given the rarity of mid-decade redistricting and of special sessions in general, it’s unclear how the next few weeks will play out.
That starts with when lawmakers actually decide to convene.
Braun set the special session for Monday, but Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, and Sen. President Pro Tem Roderic Bray, R-Martinsville, announced Wednesday the Legislature won’t meet that day.
The Indiana General Assembly is already expected to be in session Nov. 18 for Organization Day, the ceremonial kickoff of next year’s legislative session.
Indiana law allows special sessions to run for a maximum of 30 session days across 40 calendar days.
During the most recent special session, in 2022 when lawmakers pushed through a near-total ban on abortions, the session date started on July 6, but lawmakers didn’t meet in person until July 25.
“I think of it as … a punch clock when you have a job. You have to clock in. That’s when taxpayer money starts to be spent,” said Laura Wilson, an associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis.
Another concern is the timeline of getting new maps in place.
Most observers say Jan. 7 is a key deadline for new congressional districts to be in place. That’s when 2026 primary candidates can begin filing.
But Wilson said there’s no law that prevents maps from making their way to county clerks after that date or for the Legislature to simply change the date for when candidates can first file.
That could get messy, however.
Legal challenges
If Republicans break up the 1st and 7th Congressional districts, which currently largely encompass northwest Indiana and Marion County, respectively, and lean Democratic, it’s virtually guaranteed there will be legal challenges.
“I will tell you right now that those (court) challenges are coming,” said Karen Tallian, chair of the Indiana Democratic Party, told The Indiana Lawyer last month. “They’re already being prepared.”
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has already declared a redraw “perfectly legal,” writing on social media earlier in September that his office is ready to defend new maps from whatever challenge is brought against them.
Ultimately, scholars who spoke to IBJ believe it will come down to court rulings as to whether Indiana voters go into the 2026 elections with new maps.
Helmke at the O’Neill School of Public Affairs said the first legal challenge Democrats will likely raise will be whether the Indiana constitution allows mid-decade redistricting.
Some states expressly forbid mid-decade redistricting in their constitutions, while others task an independent commission to draw maps every 10 years. Indiana’s constitution, however, isn’t as clear.
According to Article 4, Section 5 of the Indiana Constitution, “The General Assembly elected during the year in which a federal decennial census is taken shall fix by law the number of Senators and Representatives and apportion them among districts according to the number of inhabitants in each district, as revealed by that federal decennial census.”
In the mid-1990s, when Republicans pushed for redistricting Statehouse districts mid-decade, Democrats argued the constitution does not allow for redrawing maps at any point other than after a census.
But Helmke feels that reading of the state constitution doesn’t apply to U.S. Congressional districts.
“There is at least an argument that the Indiana Constitution says you can only redraw the state legislative districts every once a decade. But that does not apply to the Congressional seats,” said Helmke. “They can go ahead and do the Congressional seats now. Legally they can do that.”
Also legal is political-motivated gerrymandering, according to Helmke and Greg Shufeldt, an associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis. They pointed to the 2019 Supreme Court case Ruch v. Common Cause, in which the conservative majority held political gerrymandering is “incompatible with democratic principles,” but said the issue was outside the purview of the judicial branch.
Helmke and Shufeldt said opponents of redistricting might have a better case by arguing new maps would violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Section 2 of that law generally outlaws voting practices that discriminate against minorities and the section has been used to guard against redistricting efforts that intentionally split up minority districts to dilute their voting power.
“The 7th Congressional District is the only district in Indiana that has a non-white member of Congress,” Shufeldt said. “The racial contours of who would be most likely to be disenfranchised in these new maps likely poses it for a challenge and that’s where I would anticipate that the bulk of the legal challenges would come.”
Marion County is 27% Black, while Lake County is 24% Black and 20% Latino, according to 2020 U.S. Census data.
However, the impact of any lawsuit on redistricting depends on how quickly it moves through the court system. It’s unlikely lawsuits would be resolved by the time voting starts in April for the 2026 primaries. But, Helmke said, a lot hangs on whether a judge grants a temporary injunction while the case is adjudicated.
“I’m sure there’ll be a request for a temporary injunction, and they’ll want to see what the Seventh Circuit [Court of Appeals] does with that,” Helmke said. “If they hold up the injunction, then, presumably, we have the old maps. If they allow the redistricting to go forward and not have an injunction in place, then we’ll have the new maps.”
Aside from an immediate injunction, a redistricting lawsuit could take a variety of twists and turns.
Indiana wouldn’t be alone in seeing legal challenges to redistricting. Already in Texas and Missouri, two conservative states which have redrawn maps favorable to Republicans, there are a number of lawsuits challenging redistricting.
Because legal challenges in multiple states would center around the constitutionality of mid-decade redistricting and racial gerrymandering, Shufeldt said it’s possible lawsuits in Indiana get consolidated into a larger case.
Such a case would likely be appealed up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where more uncertainty would await.
As recently as 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that Republican-drawn maps in Alabama violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered the state to create another majority-minority district. Even in that case, the justices overruled an injunction by a lower court that allowed the gerrymandered maps to be used for the 2022 midterms.
That opens up a possible scenario where Republicans win all nine Congressional seats in Indiana in 2026, but are forced to redraw districts for 2028.
Shufeldt and Helmke, however, noted conservatives on the Supreme Court have signaled that they want to eliminate requirements to take race into consideration at all. That could come to a head in the pivotal case Louisiana v. Callais which the court heard oral arguments for this month.
A ruling on that case is expected next summer, after the 2026 primaries, but it could give state legislatures carte blanche in redistricting fights all over the country.
“People are anticipating that the Supreme Court will say that it’s okay to chop up these districts, that it’s unconstitutional to take race into account in any way,” Helmke said. “That would basically be a green light to the legislature to chop up [Andre] Carson’s district. Give some to [Jefferson] Shreve, some to [Victoria] Spartz. And as long as you say ‘We’re aren’t doing this to dilute the Black vote, we’re doing this to dilute the Democratic vote,’ you’re okay.”
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