The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday announced that it will allow Alabama to hold elections under its newly enacted congressional map despite a federal trial court’s order to redraw the map to add a second majority Black district. Read the order here.
In a 5-4 vote, the court granted Alabama’s application for a stay from the trial court’s decision invalidating the map under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The 4 Justices in the minority would have allowed the 2022 election to go forward in Alabama with a remedial map as the three-judge trial court had ordered. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a lengthy concurrence addressing fears -from the dissenting Justices and likely those in the civil rights community – that the stay order portends a radical weakening of federal voting rights law. Kavanaugh addressed this by saying:
“To begin with, the principal dissent is wrong to claim that the Court’s stay order makes any new law regarding the Voting Rights Act. The stay order does not make or signal any change to voting rights law. The stay order is not a ruling on the merits, but instead simply stays the District Court’s injunction pending a ruling on the merits.”
The court will hear the case on its merits later this term or at the beginning of the next term this Fall.
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