Supreme Court Reinstates Alabama Congressional District Map
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday evening reinstated a voting map for congressional elections in Alabama that a lower court had said violated the Voting Rights Act.
The 5-4 decision came on an emergency appeal from Alabama, which challenged the conclusion of a three-judge federal court panel that the Republican-drawn map diluted the power of Black voters to elect their chosen candidates.
The panel held that in a state in which the population is more than one-quarter Black, the mapmakers should have been able to create two districts in which the majority of voters were Black.
Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s three liberals in dissent.
The justices said they would hear an appeal of the lower court’s ruling, but did not schedule a date nor place the case on an expedited schedule as they have done with other controversial cases this term.
That means, in all likelihood, such an appeal won’t be heard until the fall.
As a result, the ruling — actually a stay of the lower court’s decision — means that for at least one more election cycle, Alabama will have just a single majority-Black congressional district.
As is their custom, the justices in the majority gave no rationale for their decision.
But in a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested if timing isn’t everything, it at least counts for an awful lot.
“When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties and voters, among others.”
Justice Samuel Alito Jr. joined in the concurrence.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the dissent, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.
In it, she said, “Accepting Alabama’s contentions would rewrite decades of this Court’s precedent about Section 2 of the [Voting Rights Act].
“For that reason, this Court goes badly wrong in granting a stay,” Kagan continued. “There may — or may not — be a basis for revising our VRA precedent in light of the modern districting technology that Alabama’s application highlights. But such a change can properly happen only after full briefing and argument — not based on the scanty review this court gives matters on its shadow docket.”
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, now chairman of the National Redistricting Foundation, said in a statement that the justices in a majority had committed “an ideological abuse of the court’s power.”
“The congressional map passed by Alabama’s Republican-led legislature is a textbook violation of the Voting Rights Act, and the lower court’s order is a straightforward application of the law as it has been interpreted for decades,” Holder said. “This ill founded decision will force voting in the state to proceed under maps determined to be inconsistent with the law.
“There is more than sufficient time for primary and general elections to occur — the majority’s view otherwise is specious. With or without the court, the decades-long fight to bring electoral fairness to Alabama will continue. The majority on the court have aligned themselves with a past that the nation was thought to be beyond,” he concluded.
Dan can be reached at [email protected] and at https://twitter.com/DanMcCue.
