Supreme Court backs landmark voting rights law, strikes down Alabama congressional map
Last edited Thu Jun 8, 2023, 02:21 PM - Edit history (2)
Source: NBC News
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down Republican-drawn congressional districts in Alabama that civil rights activists say discriminated against Black voters in a surprise reaffirmation of the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The court in a 5-4 vote ruled against Alabama, meaning the map of the seven congressional districts, which heavily favors Republicans, will now be redrawn. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, joined the court's three liberals in the majority.
In doing so, the court — which has a 6-3 conservative majority — turned away the state’s effort to make it harder to remedy concerns raised by civil rights advocates that the power of Black voters in states like Alabama is being diluted by dividing voters into districts where white voters dominate.
In the ruling, Roberts, writing for the majority, said a lower court had correctly concluded that the congressional map violated the voting rights law. In 2013, Roberts authored a ruling that gutted a separate, important provision of the Voting Rights Act and has long argued that various government efforts to address historic racial discrimination are problematic and may exacerbate the situation. He wrote in Thursday's ruling that there are genuine fears that the Voting Rights Act “may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power” and that the Alabama ruling “does not diminish or disregard those concerns.”
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-strikes-alabama-congressional-map-voting-rights-dispute-rcna64476
Article updated.
Previous articles/headline -
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, joined the court's three liberals in the majority. In doing so, the court -- which has a 6-3 conservative majority -- turned away the state's effort to make it harder to remedy concerns raised by civil rights advocates that the power of Black voters in states like Alabama is being diluted by dividing voters into districts where white voters dominate.
In Thursday's ruling, Roberts, writing for the majority, said a lower court had correctly concluded that the congressional map violated the voting rights law. He wrote that there are genuine fears that the Voting Rights Act "may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power" and that the Alabama ruling "does not diminish or disregard those concerns."
The court instead "simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here," Roberts added. The two consolidated cases arose from litigation over the new congressional district map that was drawn by the Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature after the 2020 census. The challengers, including individual voters and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, said the map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Black voters.
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down Republican-drawn congressional districts in Alabama that civil rights activists say discriminated against Black voters in a surprise reaffirmation of the landmark Voting Rights Act. The court in a 5-4 vote ruled against Alabama, meaning the map of the seven congressional districts, which heavily favors Republicans, will now be redrawn. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, joined the court's three liberals in the majority.
In doing so, the court -- which has a 6-3 conservative majority -- turned away the state's effort to make it harder to remedy concerns raised by civil rights advocates that the power of Black voters in states like Alabama is being diluted by dividing voters into districts where white voters dominate.
In Thursday's ruling, Roberts, writing for the majority, said a lower court had correctly concluded that the congressional map violated the voting rights law. Roberts wrote that there are genuine fears that the Voting Rights Act "may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power" and that the Alabama ruling "does not diminish or disregard those concerns." The court instead "simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here," he added.
The two consolidated cases arose from litigation over the new congressional district map that was drawn by the Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature after the 2020 census. The challengers, including individual voters and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, said the map violated Section 2 of the 1965 voting rights law by discriminating against Black voters.
Original article -
The court on a 5-4 vote ruled against Alabama, meaning the map of the seven congressional districts, which heavily favors Republicans, will now be redrawn. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both conservatives, joined the court's three liberals in the majority.
In doing so, the court -- which has a 6-3 conservative majority -- turned away the state's effort to make it harder to remedy concerns raised by civil rights advocates that the power of Black voters in states like Alabama is being diluted by dividing voters into districts where white voters dominate.
The two consolidated cases arose from litigation over the new congressional district map that was drawn by the Republican-controlled Alabama Legislature after the 2020 census. The challengers, including individual voters and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, said the map violated Section 2 of the 1965 voting rights law by discriminating against Black voters.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Conservation of all of Earth's resources and the furtherance of humanity's progressive societal evolution defines Democratic Conservatism.
Conservation is the provenance of the Democrats.
Conservation is what we do, it's what we fight for when we fight for our rights, because in reason's absence delusion rules as has sadly been the case throughout our nation's sordid history of rejecting facts in evidence and embracing the firehose of falsehoods of closely held beliefs.
We fight against delusion and malice though reason.
We will not desist.
near, through, or around the urban areas. So instead of packing one district as a ~54% black, they could actually create 2 districts that are about 40% black (where those could still become (D)).
The 2011 vs 2021 maps are here (which basically keeps the same configuration to limit the districts to the one majority-black/(D)) - https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/politics/us-redistricting/alabama-redistricting-map/
where they throw all of Birmingham and some of Montgomery in the one (D) 7th congressional district.
Alternately, they could potentially split those 2 cities off and keep one in the one district and the other in a "central" 6th congressional district, something along the like look of this (where Birmingham would be in the 6th and Montgomery in the 7th)-
Here is an article when this was ongoing - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alabama-redistricting-map-congress-majority-black-district/
and make DC & PR states while they're at it 
I knew there was at least one other case bundled into this but wasn't sure if it could be applied to others. 
