The US Supreme Court on Thursday, June 8, invalidated an electoral district map adopted by Republican-elect officials in Alabama, a southern state, alleging discrimination against black voters. Incidentally, by a slim majority of five out of nine judges, she refused to unravel the great Civil Rights Act of 1965 any further, to the great relief of minority defenders.
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This text, the Voting Rights Act, was passed to prevent former segregation states from stripping African Americans of the right to vote. In recent years, however, it has had some of its content stripped from it by the Supreme Court. This file was seen as a new attempt to weaken them.
Beyond the debate on its map, Alabama had tried to persuade the Supreme Court to change its case law, which prohibits diluting black voters by concentrating them in a limited number of counties to reduce their influence elsewhere. In agreeing to accept his appeal, the court, steeped in conservatism, seemed ready to provide him with a reasoning.
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During the hearing, the progressive judge Elena Kagan was moved: “The voting rights law is one of the great advances of our democracy (…).” What will remain of it? Alabama’s proposed “new approach,” which sought to prevent racial criteria from being considered in assessing the legality of electoral reallocations, “is unconvincing in theory or in practice,” Supreme Court Chief John Roberts said on Thursday. on behalf of the majority.
“The work is not done yet”
This ruling “reaffirms a fundamental principle: There must be no racial discrimination in elections,” hailed President Joe Biden, but for whom “the work is not done.” The Democrat, elected largely by African American votes, asked Congress to pass legislation to restore and strengthen the 1965 law. Such a proposal is blocked by the Republican opposition.
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The powerful civil rights organization ACLU also welcomed the “victory” of black voters. “The Supreme Court rejected the Orwellian idea that it was inappropriate to use racial criteria to determine the existence of racial discrimination,” which would have overruled the law, said one of the ACLU’s attorneys, Davin Rosborough.
The decision, thus perpetuating the status quo, is also forcing Republican authorities in Alabama to review a House seat allocation map created in 2021. According to this classification, black voters, who vote predominantly Democratic, were in the majority in only one of the state’s seven constituencies, while making up 27% of the population.
The new map also cut right through a predominantly black region, the “Black Belt,” and split it in half. The Supreme Court ruling requires authorities to create a second constituency with a majority of African-American voters.
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