WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court on Thursday he issued a surprise 5-4 ruling in favor of black voters in an Alabama congressional redistricting case, with two conservative justices joining liberals in rejecting a Republican-led effort to weaken a landmark voting rights law.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s liberals in affirming a lower court ruling that found a probable violation of the Voting Rights Act in a congressional map of Alabama with a black majority seat of seven congressional districts in a state where more than one in four residents are black. Now the state will have to draw a new map for next year’s elections.
The decision was closely watched for its potential effect on control of the deeply divided US House of Representatives. Because of the ruling, Republican-led legislatures in Alabama and Louisiana will have to redraw maps so they can increase black representation.
The result was unexpected because the court had allowed the contested Alabama map to be used for the 2022 election and, in arguments last October, the justices appeared poised to make it harder to challenge redistricting plans as racially discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The chief justice himself suggested last year that he was open to changes in the way courts weigh discrimination claims under the part of the law known as section 2. But on Thursday, Roberts wrote that the court refused to “recast our Section 2 jurisprudence as requested by Alabama.”
Roberts was part of conservative high court majorities in earlier cases that made it harder for racial minorities to use the Voting Rights Act in ideologically divided rulings 2013 i 2021.
The other four conservative justices dissented on Thursday. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the decision forces “Alabama to intentionally redraw its longstanding congressional districts so that black voters can control a number of seats roughly proportional to the black portion of the state’s population. The Article 2 does not require such a thing, and if it did, the Constitution would not allow it.”
The Biden administration sided with black voters in Alabama.
Attorney General Merrick Garland applauded the ruling: “Today’s decision rejects efforts to further erode fundamental voting rights protections and preserves the principle that in America, all eligible voters should be able to exercise their right constitutional right to vote free of race-based discrimination.”
Evan Milligan, a black voter and the lead plaintiff in the case, said the ruling was a victory for democracy and people of color.
“We are grateful that the Supreme Court has upheld what we knew to be true: that everyone deserves to have their vote and voice heard. Today is a victory for democracy and freedom not just in Alabama but across United States,” Milligan said. .
The case stems from challenges to Alabama’s seven-district congressional map, which included a district in which black voters form a large enough majority to have the power to elect their preferred candidate. Opponents said one district is not enough, noting that overall, Alabama’s population is more than 25 percent black.
A three-judge panel, with two appointed by former President Donald Trump, had little trouble concluding that the plan likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of black Alabamians. The panel ordered that a new map be drawn.
But the state quickly appealed to the Supreme Court, where five conservative justices blocked the lower court’s ruling from moving forward. At the same time, the court decided to hear the Alabama case.
Partisan politics underlie the case, and in a deeply divided House of Representatives, Thursday’s ruling could have a significant effect. Republicans who dominate elected office in Alabama have resisted creating a second district with a Democratic-leaning black majority, or close to one, that could send another Democrat to Congress.
The justices found that Alabama concentrated black voters in one district, while spreading them among others to make it much more difficult to choose more than one candidate of their choice.
The justices found that Alabama’s black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district.
Denying discrimination, Alabama argued that the lower court’s ruling would have forced it to sort voters by race and insisted it was taking a “race-neutral” approach to redistricting.
In arguments in October, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson scoffed at the idea that race could not be part of the equation. Jackson, the first black woman on the court, said the constitutional amendments passed after the Civil War and the Voting Rights Act a century later were intended to do the same thing, make black Americans “equal to white citizens “.
Associated Press writer Kim Chandler contributed to this report from Montgomery, Alabama.
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