\n<\/p>\n
Alabama can use a congressional map a lower court had previously said was intentionally drawn to discriminate against Black voters in the state, the US supreme court ruled on Monday.<\/p>\n
The court\u2019s decision allows Alabama to use a congressional map it passed in 2023 after courts struck down an earlier version of its map as a violation of the Voting Rights Act \u2013 a decision the US supreme court agreed with at the time. Alabama will be able to use the map in this year\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n
A three-judge panel concluded the 2023 map did not fix the VRA violations and instead said it was passed to intentionally discriminate against Black voters in the state. \u201cWe cannot understand the 2023 Plan as anything other than an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians\u2019 voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way,\u201d that panel wrote. The panel had a special master redraw the map, which resulted in two majority-Black districts, and issued an injunction that prohibited Alabama from using another map until after the 2030 census.<\/p>\n
The supreme court\u2019s majority offered no explanation for its decision, even though it said in its Voting Rights Act case two weeks ago that the relevant law in the Alabama case had not been overturned. The court\u2019s three liberal justices dissented from Monday\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n
Alabama\u2019s current map has five congressional districts represented by white Republicans and two represented by Black Democrats. The 2023 map that will now go into effect eliminates the seat held by Shomari Figures, a representative, that stretches from Mobile and across the state\u2019s Black belt, and replaces it with a Republican district.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s decisioncame just days after the country\u2019s highest court decided to gut section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a case dealing with Louisiana\u2019s congressional districts. Alabama quickly returned to the US supreme court and asked them to lift the injunction, which they did on Monday.<\/p>\n
The court\u2019s decision on Monday shows how aggressively the justices are willing to move to free up Republican states to redraw districts that dilute the influence of Black voters.<\/p>\n
The court\u2019s three liberal justices dissented from the opinion, saying that the court offered little explanation for overturning the lower court\u2019s finding of intentional discrimination.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe court today unceremoniously discards the District Court\u2019s meticulously documented and supported discriminatory-intent finding and careful remedial order without any sound basis for doing so and without regard for the confusion that will surely ensue,\u201d Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent, joined by Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. \u201cThe record showed that Alabama made an intentional choice to perpetuate and entrench, rather than remedy and uproot, the racial discrimination that the District Court had previously found and that this Court had affirmed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alabama\u2019s primary was set to take place on 19 May, but Republicans passed a law last week moving that primary in the event the US supreme court would act. In the past, the supreme court has refused to upend districts or other election rules on the eve of an election, a principle it abandoned both in the Louisiana case \u2013 where it is issued its decision as voting was underway \u2013 and in Alabama.<\/p>\n
In addition to Alabama, Republicans in Tennessee, Louisiana, and South Carolina have all moved quickly to try to get new maps in place to boost Republicans\u2019 chances in this fall\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alabama can use a congressional map a lower court had previously said was intentionally drawn to discriminate against Black voters in the state, the US supreme court ruled on Monday. The court\u2019s decision allows Alabama to use a congressional map it passed in 2023 after courts struck down an earlier version of its map as<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[10155,160,8806,14148,2415,4627,666,159],"class_list":{"0":"post-49321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-alabama","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-electoral","11":"tag-favors","12":"tag-map","13":"tag-republicans","14":"tag-rules","15":"tag-supreme"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}