On Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Alabama District Court’s preliminary injunction against the state’s 2021 Congressional map on grounds that it diluted the votes of Black voters in the state in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The 5-4 decision ensures that Alabama’s 7 district congressional map, which included only one with a majority of Black voters – will have to be redrawn to include an additional minority Black district. African Americans make up more than a quarter of the state’s population. The decision has implications for Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas as well.
It is important to note that this challenge has not received a full trial in Alabama as of yet. Thursday’s ruling upheld the Alabama District Court’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction against using the map before a full trial and final ruling because there was a substantial likelihood based on preliminary findings of that court that the map violated Section 2. The U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion simply agreed with this finding. The state of Alabama has indicated it will press on with a full trial going forward. Last year the high court stayed the District Court’s order to redraw the map even though it scheduled oral argument in the case. Elections were held in Alabama under the disputed map in the Fall of 2022.
Many observers and media outlets have described the high court’s ruling as a “surprise,” but if one expected the court to rule according to longstanding precedent, this decision would not be a shock.
The legal test for whether a map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is encapsulated in the 1982 case Thornburg v. Gingles, which requires a plaintiff to meet a three-pronged test to preliminarily establish a case against a map. The court agreed that each prong had been more than satisfied. The court’s comments on each prong from the opinion’s syllabus are below:
Prong #1:The minority group must be sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district.
Court: “As to the first Gingles precondition, the District Court correctly found that black voters could constitute a majority in a second district that was “reasonably configured.” The plaintiffs adduced eleven illustrative districting maps that Alabama could enact, at least one of which contained two majority-black districts that comported with traditional districting criteria.”
Prongs #2 & 3: The minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive. Additionally, the minority group must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.
Court: “As to the second and third Gingles preconditions, the District Court determined that there was “no serious dispute that Black voters are politically cohesive, nor that the challenged districts’ white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat Black voters’ preferred candidate.” The court noted that, “on average, Black voters supported their candidates of choice with 92.3% of the vote” while “white voters supported Black-preferred candidates with 15.4% of the vote.”
In concluding the court’s opinion Chief Justice Roberts reinforced the limited prophylactic nature of Section 2:
“The Court recognizes that reapportionment remains primarily the duty and responsibility of the States, not the federal courts. Section 2 thus never requires the adoption of districts that violate traditional redistricting principles and instead limits judicial intervention to “those instances of intensive racial politics” where the “excessive role [of race] in the electoral process . . . den[ies] minority voters equal opportunity to participate.”
Media Coverage: Wash. Post, PBS, New York Times, Reuters.
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