![]() ![]() Chief Justice Roberts, who authored or joined those earlier decisions, today wrote for the court majority to preserve the way the voting rights law has been applied for nearly 40 years in redistricting cases. The decision was a surprise in light of the conservative court's prior decisions gutting other major provisions in the voting rights law. The court said that in Alabama, a state where there are seven congressional seats and 1 in 4 voters is Black, the Republican-dominated state legislature had denied African American voters a reasonable chance to elect a second representative of their choice. NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: By a 5-4 vote, a coalition of conservative and liberal justices reaffirmed the court's 1986 precedent interpreting how legislative districts must be drawn under the landmark Voting Rights Act as amended in 1982. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports. Supreme Court ruled that Alabama violated the Voting Rights Act by failing to draw a second majority-Black congressional district. It was January 2022, not this past January.Today, the U.S. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the year of a lower court decision. The court is also considering another significant election-related dispute in its current term, with the court set to rule on a Republican effort to curb the ability of state courts to enforce state constitutional provisions in federal elections. That ruling, due before the end of this month, could make it easier for Republican legislatures to restrict voting rights.ĬORRECTION (June 8, 2023, 1:41 p.m. In the others, the court could end affirmative action in college admissions and strike down part of a law that gives preference to Native Americans seeking to adopt Native American children. The case is one of three the court is hearing in the current term in which conservative lawyers are pushing what they call race-neutral arguments favored on the right as a way to remedy race discrimination. In a 2021 ruling arising from Arizona, the court made it more difficult to bring cases under Section 2. The Supreme Court has in two cases over the last decade weakened the Voting Rights Act, beginning in 2013 when it gutted a key provision of the law that allowed for federal oversight of election law changes in certain states. New technology makes it easier to find maps that could potentially be challenged under the Voting Rights Act, he added. That's because the court effectively endorsed the use of computer-generated maps in challenging districts. going forward than simply a reaffirmation of the status quo." Richard Pildes, an election law expert at New York University School of Law, said the ruling is "more significant. ![]() He cited other traditional “race-neutral” map-drawing factors that take into account issues such as regional culture and identity, as well as the requirement that districts have similar-sized populations. Marshall said in court papers that the fact that the challengers were able to show using computer-generated maps that it was possible to draw a second majority-Black district was not sufficient evidence that the state’s actions were discriminatory. The Alabama case was one of several in which the Supreme Court’s decisions may have contributed to Republicans winning their fragile majority in the House of Representatives.Īlabama argued that the lower court put too much emphasis on race in reaching its conclusions. 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.” ![]() 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. ![]() In the ruling, Roberts, writing for the majority, said a lower court had correctly concluded that the congressional map violated the voting rights law. Voters exit a polling station a National Guard base during the presidential primary in Camden, Ala., in March 2020. 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. ![]()
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