As taken from the Wall Street Journal September 26, 2023. If you have not been paying attention to what is happening in Alabama, this will bring you up to date. SCOTUS again rejected Alabama’s attempt to pack most of Alabama’s Black American citizenry into one congressional district. Alabama’s desires to maintain white majorities in six of its seven congressional districts. Supreme Court Rejects Alabama Bid to Scrap Black-Majority Congressional District, msn.com, Jess Bravin. SCOTUS rules against Alabama legislature. A last-minute request to the Supreme Court to reject its prior opinion fell flat. Instead, SCOTUS reaffirms its prior ruling. It came in support of a three-judge Federal court (COA?) and a District Court. All three courts found
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Bill Haskell considers the following as important: 5-4 Decision, Alabama, Congressional Districts, Journalism, law, politics
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As taken from the Wall Street Journal September 26, 2023.
If you have not been paying attention to what is happening in Alabama, this will bring you up to date. SCOTUS again rejected Alabama’s attempt to pack most of Alabama’s Black American citizenry into one congressional district. Alabama’s desires to maintain white majorities in six of its seven congressional districts.
Supreme Court Rejects Alabama Bid to Scrap Black-Majority Congressional District, msn.com, Jess Bravin.
SCOTUS rules against Alabama legislature. A last-minute request to the Supreme Court to reject its prior opinion fell flat. Instead, SCOTUS reaffirms its prior ruling. It came in support of a three-judge Federal court (COA?) and a District Court. All three courts found the Republican-majority state legislature splintering a cohesive Black community into neighboring white-majority districts where they were in the minority and lacking political power. I guess one could call this reverse Gerrymandering.
The high court’s 5-4 opinion was read as allowing the state to choose which communities of interest to maintain in congressional districts, considering race as being only one characteristic. In July, the Alabama Legislature drew up a new map, which it said complied with the ruling despite failing to create a second Black district as decided by the court.
The district court rejected the legislative plan in September. After deciding it to be futile to give the Alabama Legislature another chance at districting, the court ordered a special master and cartographer to draw up new lines compliant with the Voting Rights Act. The state challenged the decision and asked the Supreme Court to block the lower-court order while it pursued further appeals.
SCOTUS in a 5-4 decision rejected the state.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored or joined prior decisions gutting key parts of the voting law wrote for the court majority. The 5-4 decision was to preserve the way the voting rights law had been applied for nearly 40 years in redistricting cases. Roberts was joined by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the courts three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
AB: Adamant power-hungry state rights bigots, aren’t they? Chief Justice Roberts . . .
“We see no reason to disturb the district court’s careful findings. The Alabama legislature’s approach to redistricting is an attempt to remake our jurisprudence anew, and is wrong in both “theory and practice.”
AB: Neither is this creating segregated Districts as Justice Thomas wrote in decent.
Supreme Court upholds Voting Rights Act in Alabama redistricting case, NPR, Nina Totenberg