‘A disservice to Black Alabamians’: Outrage as Supreme Court restores Alabama maps which discriminate against Black people
‘A disservice to Black Alabamians’: Outrage as Supreme Court restores Alabama maps which discriminate against Black people
In a 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court has allowed Alabama’s Republican-dominated state legislature to keep its newly drawn congressional maps after a previous federal court ruling found that the maps discriminate against Black voters.
The justices said they would hear arguments in the case, teeing up another battle over the Voting Rights Act and the issue of racial gerrymandering on the high court’s docket.
The order issued on 7 February – the first dealing with 2022 elections – will maintain the latest congressional maps ahead of the upcoming election cycle while the legal challenges play out.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three liberal justices in dissent.
In her furious dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan said the decision “does a disservice to Black Alabamians” who “have had their electoral power diminished – in violation of a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy.”
She slammed the majority for issuing another significant decision with far-reaching impacts in a “disconcertingly long line of cases in which this Court uses its shadow docket to signal or make changes in the law, without anything approaching full briefing and argument.”
Alabama’s GOP legislators approved a map that significantly dilutes Black residents’ political power, a three-judge panel ruled on 24 January.
AFP via Getty Images US-POLITICS-SUPREMECOURT
The ruling in US District Court ordered the legislature to create at least two – rather than just one – districts in which Black voters are more likely to be able to elect a representative that more closely resembles the state’s demographics.
“Black voters have less opportunity than other [Alabama residents] to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the judges wrote. “Any remedial plan will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.”
The judges said that an “appropriate remedy is a congressional redistricting plan that includes either an additional majority-Black congressional district, or an additional district in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.”
The Supreme Court decision comes in the middle of a contentious nationwide redistricting cycle, the once-a-decade process of redrafting the nation’s political boundaries based on US Census results.
But states are now, for the first time in decades, drafting those maps without critical protections from the Voting Rights Act, after the Supreme Court invalidated a requirement that changes to voting rules from states with histories of discrimination be approved by the US Department of Justice.
A group of voting rights advocates – including the Greater Birmingham Ministries, Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, and a group of voters represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, among others – filed the lawsuit against the state’s newly drawn political boundaries.
A group of Black voters filed a similar lawsuit in 2018 and lost.
Meanwhile, similar lawsuits against new congressional maps are pending in Texas and North Carolina. The Justice Department has sued Texas over newly drawn maps approved by the state’s Republican-dominated legislature.
Roughly 27 per cent of Alabama’s population is Black, though Black residents represent one of seven of the state’s congressional districts.
The state’s sole majority Black district – currently represented by Democratic US Rep Terri Sewell – has a voting population that is 60 per cent Black, roughly one-third of the state’s Black population. The state’s remaining Black population is “cracked” across the First, Second and Third congressional districts – all represented by Republicans.
Reference: Alex Woodward : Independent:
Articles-Popular
- Main
- Contact Us
- Planetary Existences-2
- Planetary Existences
- TWO REVELATIONS-2
- The Two Revelations
- Jeffery Epstein - The Saga - 9
- Jeffery Epstein - The Saga - 8
- Jeffery Epstein - The Saga - 10
- Universality of Initiation
- The Participants In The Mysteries-2
- The Path Of Initiation
- Initiation and the Devas
- The Fourth Way - Study of Oneself - P.D.Ouspensky
- Impeachment Investigators Subpoena White House - Ukraine
- Discipleship - Group Relations - 2
- The Probationary Path - 2
- The Final Initiation
- The Succeeding Two Initiations
- The Participants In The Mysteries
- Discipleship - Group Relationships
- Discipleship
- Jeffery Epstein - The Saga - 7
- The Fourth Way - Wrong Functions - P.D Ouspensky
- Statues are a mark of honour. Like Edward Colston, Cecil Rhodes and Oliver Cromwell have to go
- Jeffery Epstein - The Saga - 6
Articles - Latest
- Blinken to Hamas: Accept Israel's 'extraordinarily generous' Gaza truce proposal
- 'Loan shark', 83, ordered to pay back over £173,000
- Thai court adds jail time for rights lawyer who urged monarchy reform
- Rapist jailed a decade after campaign of abuse against London woman
- Former SNP council leader appears in court charged with sexual offences
- Former mayor of Winchester smothered elderly mother with cushion, court told
- Spanish PM decides not to quit despite corruption claims against wife
- Scotland's Yousaf set to resign as first minister, UK media say
- Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction overturned
- Jamaica on track to remove King Charles as head of state by 2025, minister says
- Case against Sir Jeffrey Donaldson to be heard in court
- Rwanda needs migrants because of the genocide, says Home Secretary
- Will a state supreme court challenge end California’s ‘racist’ record-setting death row for good?
- Sweden aims to prepare critical infrastructure for potential war with Russia - Bloomberg
- Russia detains deputy of defence minister Shoigu for corruption