Voting rights in Alabama will be reviewed by the court
2022.10.04 06:35
Voting rights in Alabama will be reviewed by the court
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – The state of Alabama is defending a Republican-drawn electoral map that has been criticized by judges for reducing the influence of Black voters. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in a significant legal dispute that has the potential to further undermine a significant federal voting rights law.
The map showing the boundaries of Alabama’s seven U.S. House of Representatives districts was invalidated by a panel of three federal judges. However, Alabama was permitted to use the map for the November 8 U.S. congressional elections, in which Republicans are attempting to regain control of Congress, by a 5-4 decision in February.
Two consolidated cases challenging the map’s legality that were filed by Black voters are scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court. The dispute provides the court, which has a conservative majority of 6-3, with an opportunity to further weaken protections provided by the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.
Tuesday will mark the second day that liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will participate in the court’s hearing of arguments. She is the first Black woman to be appointed to the nation’s highest court and was nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden. She was a lively questioner on Monday, bombarding attorneys with questions and follow-ups in two cases.
Although he has previously voted to restrict the scope of the Voting Rights Act, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts joined liberals on the court in dissenting from the February decision allowing the Alabama map to be utilized.
Despite the fact that 27% of the state’s population is Black, the lower court determined that Alabama’s map diminished the influence of Black voters by distributing the rest of the Black population in other districts at levels too small to form a majority.
According to Alabama, drawing a second district to give Black voters a better chance of electing their preferred candidate would be racially discriminatory because it would favor them over other voters. According to Alabama, the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal legal protection would be violated if the Voting Rights Act mandated that states take race into account in this way.
A ruling in Alabama’s favor, according to the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden and a number of voting rights organizations supporting the plaintiffs, would put at risk certain electoral districts in other states for the U.S. House and state legislatures, potentially reducing minority representation in politics.
When the Voting Rights Act was enacted, Black voters were prevented from casting ballots in Southern states like Alabama. Section 2, a provision of the Voting Rights Act, is the focus of the case. Its purpose is to combat voting laws that lead to racial bias even when there is no racist intent.
The Supreme Court has already been persuaded to limit the scope of the Voting Rights Act by conservative states and groups.
In another Alabama case, it ruled in 2013 that a key part of the rule that said which states with a history of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws was invalid. The justices made it more difficult to demonstrate violations of Section 2 in a ruling in 2021 that supported Republican-backed voting restrictions in Arizona.
The Supreme Court has been informed by supporters of Alabama that the challenges to the map are merely attempts to assist the Democratic Party in winning elections due to the overwhelming preference of Black voters for Democratic candidates.
Each decade, electoral districts are redrawn to reflect changes in population as measured by a national census, the most recent of which was taken in 2020. This type of redistricting is carried out by the party in power in the majority of states, which can result in map manipulation for partisan gain.
In a significant decision in 2019, the Supreme Court said that federal judges could not stop partisan gerrymandering. Gerrymandering that is racially biased could still be examined by the court thanks to that decision.
