Civil

Court’s 5-4 Decision On Voting Rights Is Win For Minorities

By Stacy M. Brown
NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

In a surprising decision on Thursday, June 8, the Supreme Court struck down Republican-drawn congressional districts in Alabama, ruling that they discriminated against Black voters.

The 5-4 vote means state officials must redraw the heavily Republican-favored map of Alabama’s seven congressional districts.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, joined the court’s three liberals in the majority.

The ruling by the court, which currently holds a 6-3 conservative majority, marks a departure from the state’s attempt to make it more challenging to address concerns raised by civil rights advocates regarding the dilution of Black voters’ power in states like Alabama, where voters are divided into districts where white voters dominate.

The cases brought before the court were consolidated and originated from the litigation over the new congressional district map, which the Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature drafted after the 2020 census.

The challengers, including individual voters and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, argued that the map violated Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Black voters.

Under the new map, only one out of seven districts would likely enable Black voters to elect a candidate of their choice.

The NAACP contended that Alabama, with a population of over a quarter Black residents, should have at least two such districts and presented evidence supporting the feasibility of drawing an additional majority-Black district.