The Supreme Court, surprised us deciding that Alabama had diluted the power of Black voters by drawing a congressional voting map with a single district in which they made up a majority.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the 5-to-4 ruling. He was joined by Kavanaugh and the court’s three liberal members, Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson.
The Voting Rights Act appeares to emerge unscathed.
Roberts wrote that there were legitimate concerns that the law “may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power within the states.” He added: “Our opinion today does not diminish or disregard these concerns. It simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here.”
There is a pitched battle over redistricting playing out across the country. Civil rights leaders say the redistricting process often disadvantages growing minority communities.
This case started after Alabama’s Legislature, which is controlled by Republicans, redrew the congressional map to take account of the 2020 census.
The state has seven congressional districts, and its voting-age population is about 27 percent Black. The new map maintained a single district in which Black voters made up a majority.
That district has long elected a Democrat, while the state’s other six districts are represented by Republicans.
Black voters and advocacy groups challenged the map under the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights law enacted in 1965 to protect minority voters.
The lower courts found that voting in the state is racially polarized and that it would be possible to draw “a second reasonably configured district” to allow Black voters to elect their favored candidates.
Last year, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the lower court’s ruling by a 5-to-4 vote, ensuring that the 2022 election would take place using the Legislature’s map, the one with a single district in which Black voters were in the majority.
Recall that in 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court effectively gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which had required federal approval of changes to state and local voting laws in parts of the country with a history of racial discrimination.
But that ruling assured the public that Section 2 of the law would remain in place to protect voting rights by allowing litigation after the fact.
Section 2 bars any voting procedure that results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race.”
The NABWMT believes that our votes are precious and we should do all we can to protect them. Vote local and national to make this happen.