Supreme Court rules in favor of Black voters in Alabama redistricting case

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In a surprising turn of events, the Supreme Court delivered a 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case, demanding the establishment of a second district with a significant Black population.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh aligned themselves with the court’s liberal justices to support the lower court’s decision, which identified a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act. The original Alabama congressional map consisted of only one predominantly Black seat out of seven districts, despite the state’s Black population accounting for over a quarter of its residents.

This case had drawn significant attention due to its potential to undermine the influential voting rights legislation. The court had previously permitted the contested map’s use in the 2022 elections, and during the October hearings, the justices seemed inclined to raise the bar for employing the voting rights law to challenge racially discriminatory redistricting plans.

Chief Justice Roberts himself had suggested openness to modifying the approach in which discrimination claims are evaluated under section 2 of the law. However, in Thursday’s ruling, Roberts stated that the court would not reshape its section 2 case law as Alabama had requested.

Roberts had previously been part of conservative majorities in prior cases that made it more challenging for racial minorities to leverage the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in divided rulings in 2013 and 2021.

The remaining four conservative justices dissented from the ruling. Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the decision compelled Alabama to intentionally redraw its longstanding congressional districts to ensure Black voters controlled a proportionate number of seats based on the state’s Black population. Thomas claimed that Section 2 of the law did not demand such action and that the Constitution would not permit it.

This case originated from challenges against Alabama’s seven-district congressional map, which included only one district where Black voters formed a majority sufficient to elect their preferred candidate. The challengers argued that one district was inadequate, given Alabama’s Black population exceeding 25%.

A three-judge court, including two appointees of former President Donald Trump, had little difficulty concluding that the plan likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of Black Alabamians. The panel ordered the creation of a new map.

However, the state promptly appealed to the Supreme Court, where the conservative justices prevented the lower court ruling from taking effect. Consequently, last year’s congressional elections proceeded under the potentially unlawful map identified by the lower court.

Simultaneously, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Alabama case, with arguments taking place in early October. The court also allowed Louisiana’s congressional map, which a lower court had determined to be discriminatory, to remain in effect.

Partisan politics played a role in this case. Given the Republican dominance in Alabama’s elective offices, there was resistance to establishing a second district with a Black majority that could potentially send another Democrat to Congress.

The judges found that Alabama concentrated Black voters in one district while dispersing them among the other districts, thereby preventing them from electing candidates of their choice.

The judges determined that Alabama’s Black population was both sufficiently large and geographically compact to create a second district.

Alabama argued that the lower court’s ruling would necessitate sorting voters by race, asserting that the state was adopting a “race-neutral” approach to redistricting.

During the October arguments, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed skepticism regarding the notion that race should be disregarded. Jackson, the first Black woman on the court, emphasized that constitutional amendments passed after the Civil War and the Voting Rights Act a century later were intended to ensure Black Americans were “equal to white citizens.”

Justice Jackson, along with the court’s other two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, contended that a decision like the one

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