The US Supreme Court on Monday cleared Alabama to deploy a congressional map that a lower court found was intentionally drawn to dilute Black voting power, lifting an injunction that had blocked its use and setting the stage for the map to take effect before this year's elections.
The decision came without explanation from the court's conservative majority, despite the justices' assertion just two weeks prior that the federal Voting Rights Act remained intact. The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor accusing the majority of discarding the lower court's findings of intentional discrimination without legitimate justification.
Alabama's journey to this map began when courts struck down an earlier version in 2023 as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. The state then redrew the districts, but a three-judge panel concluded the new map was no better. The judges found it was passed specifically to discriminate against Black voters and ordered a special master to create an alternative that produced two majority-Black districts.
Under Alabama's current map, five congressional districts are represented by white Republicans and two by Black Democrats. The redrawn map that will now go into effect eliminates the seat held by Representative Shomari Figures, which spans from Mobile across the state's Black Belt region, and replaces it with a Republican district.
The three-judge panel had issued a stark assessment of the state's actions. "We cannot understand the 2023 Plan as anything other than an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians' voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way," the judges wrote. They had barred Alabama from using any other map until after the 2030 census.
Monday's ruling followed the Supreme Court's decision days earlier to weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a separate case involving Louisiana's districts. That decision apparently emboldened Alabama to return to the court and request the injunction be lifted, which it was.
The move underscores the court's willingness to clear the way for Republican-controlled states to redraw districts that diminish the electoral influence of Black voters. Sotomayor, writing for the three dissenters, emphasized the record showed Alabama had made a deliberate choice to entrench racial discrimination rather than remedy it.
Republicans in Alabama had anticipated the Supreme Court might act. Last week, the state legislature passed a law moving the primary election in case the justices intervened. Historically, the Supreme Court has avoided upending election rules close to voting day, a principle the court has now abandoned in both the Louisiana case and here.
Other Republican-led states have taken notice. Tennessee, Louisiana, and South Carolina have all begun moving quickly to implement new maps designed to strengthen Republican chances in this fall's elections.
Author James Rodriguez: "This decision confirms the court's new reality: the Voting Rights Act has been gutted in practice, and Republican states now have a green light to do what courts said they were doing in secret."
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