Sao Paulo
Black activists celebrated Thursday (8) the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which by a vote of 5 to 4 overturned the electoral map created by Republicans in Alabama that concentrated and thus guaranteed predominantly blackpopulated regions in a single district less participation of this proportion in local politics.
The confusion began in 2021, when the state’s Republican authorities drafted a new design of the local electoral map to be consistent with the previous year’s census.
Every ten years, electoral districts across the country are redefined to reflect changes identified by the census. In most states, this readjustment is done by the ruling party, which can result in manipulation of the map to the party’s advantage.
Alabama lawmakers ignored part of the study, which said blacks make up 27% of the state’s population — which in practice would guarantee that population a majority in at least one more county.
According to black activists, the new map reduced the influence of black voters by concentrating their voting rights in a single borough, while the rest of that population was dispersed to other boroughs in very small amounts to form a white majority. Last year, three federal judges accepted this challenge.
Activists said the redesign conflicted with the Voting Rights Act, enacted in 1965 to prevent formerly separate states from disenfranchising African Americans.
The Alabama government wanted to avoid including racial criteria in the assessment. State officials argued that designing a second district to favor black voters would be racially discriminatory because it would favor them at the expense of other voters. In addition, Alabama claimed that it would be against the US Constitution for the Voting Rights Act to require the state to consider race in this way.
The US Supreme Court has a 63 conservative majority and appeared to be leaning in favor of Alabama based on last October’s discussions of the trial.
But he did not bow. In addition to the three Liberals on the court, Conservative Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh also voted for the activists. The former, chief justice, said Alabama’s arguments “are unconvincing in theory or in practice.”
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who is black, argued that the court’s question before the court was whether the US legislature required Alabama to “deliberately redesign its longstanding congressional districts so that black voters could control a number of seats which is roughly proportional to the proportion of Blacks in Congress.” Population of the State”. For him the answer is no. vote won.
With the result in favor of the activists’ demand, the Alabama authorities must now create a second electoral district with a majority of black voters. The ruling “upholds the principle that every US voter should be able to exercise their constitutional right to vote without being discriminated against,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Davin Rosborough, attorney for the civil rights organization ACLU, called the decision “a major victory” and said that “the Supreme Court has rejected the idea that it is inappropriate to use racial criteria in determining the existence of racial discrimination.”
“It’s a good thing for democracy,” added Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer. The jubilation is not in vain: Congress’ new map, which is expected to take effect as early as the 2024 election, may bolster Democrats’ efforts to regain majority in the House of Representatives, which Republicans now control by a slim 222212 , crank. Black voters tend to vote for Democratic candidates more often.