Supreme Court: Alabama violated Voting Rights Act by drawing only one Black congressional district

The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered Alabama to adopt a congressional map that includes two majority-Black districts, saying the current map violates the Voting Rights Act because it unfairly dilutes the power of the state’s Black residents.

The 5-4 ruling upends the state’s map that was in effect for the 2022 elections and had just one majority-Black district.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act compels states to make sure their voting processes are “equally open” to all by ensuring that minorities have at least the same opportunities as others.

The court reasoned that Black voters’ power was illegally diluted when the map split them among several districts and left just one where they were the dominant political force. Alabama’s map violates the law under the court’s precedents for judging district lines, said the majority, siding with lower courts.

“We agree with the District Court, therefore, that plaintiffs’ illustrative maps ‘strongly suggest[ed] that Black voters in Alabama’ could constitute a majority in a second, reasonably configured, district,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

In a searing dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said his colleagues were encouraging “racial balkanization” of voters, prolonging the wait for a day when the country no longer considers race as a reason to allocate political power.

“We ensure that the race-based redistricting we impose on Alabama now will bear divisive consequences long into the future,” Justice Thomas wrote.

Joining Chief Justice Roberts were fellow Republican appointee Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and the court’s three Democratic appointees: Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Black residents made up 27.2% of Alabama’s population in the 2020 census and represented 25.9% of its voting-age population.

One district out of seven amounts to 14.3% of political power, but two districts would mean 28.6%.

Alabama argued that its maps were drawn without using race as a factor and could not be construed as an attack on Black voters’ power. The state said the lines were similar to the map drawn after the 2010 census.

The plaintiffs who challenged the map argued that the majority-Black district around Mobile could be easily joined by a second majority-Black district that includes parts of the Gulf Coast and the state’s so-called Black Belt, a largely rural area.

Alabama argued that drawing the second district would split communities with shared interests. The state ran computer simulations of various maps to show that a race-neutral map would produce only one majority-Black district.

The state took the legal battle to the Supreme Court, which allowed the single-district map to remain in place for the 2022 elections but vowed to hear the case more fully.

The result was Thursday’s ruling.

To Chief Justice Roberts, the case turned on the court’s precedents. The 1986 Gingles case, which found six out of seven districts in North Carolina diluted Black votes, in particular created a test for evaluating when Black voters’ political power is unfairly held back. The chief justice said the lower courts correctly applied the test in finding Alabama’s map illegal.

“The heart of these cases is not about the law as it exists. It is about Alabama’s attempt to remake our §2 jurisprudence anew,” he wrote.

If so, Justice Thomas said, then the precedents are the problem and must be overturned.

“Stare decisis did not save ‘separate but equal,’ despite its repeated reaffirmation in this court and the pervasive reliance states had placed upon it for decades,” Justice Thomas wrote. “It should not rescue modern-day forms of de jure racial balkanization — which, as these cases show, is exactly where our §2 vote-dilution jurisprudence has led.”

Justice Kavanaugh, writing a concurring opinion, seemed to suggest a time in the future when the Voting Rights Act could not be used to justify race-based redistricting.

He said Alabama didn’t raise the issue in this case, “and I therefore would not consider it at this time.”

A decade ago, the Supreme Court issued another major ruling on the Voting Rights Act. In Shelby County v. Holder, which Chief Justice Roberts also authored, the court upended the “preclearance” system that required some states and localities to run their voting changes by the Justice Department before putting them into effect.

The court in that case ruled that the criteria used to select which jurisdictions were so racist that they needed preapproval were outdated.

Voting rights advocates feared the court would further defang the Voting Rights Act in its latest decision.

Attorney General Merrick Garland hailed the court for avoiding that path.

“Today’s decision rejects efforts to further erode fundamental voting rights protections, and preserves the principle that in the United States, all eligible voters must be able to exercise their constitutional right to vote free from discrimination based on their race,” Mr. Garland said.

Eric H. Holder Jr., attorney general under President Obama, said the Supreme Court’s decision was a step toward “equal voting power and representation for voters of color.”

“All of the protections enshrined in the Voting Rights Act remain necessary and must remain robust. I am proud to have supported the voters in Alabama,” he said in a tweet.

Alliance for Justice, a liberal legal group, said the Supreme Court “surprisingly” preserved voting rights, a rebuke of the conservative majority.

“Despite his fervent campaign to dismantle the Voting Rights Act, John Roberts managed to recognize what has long been obvious: Congress is committed to protecting voters from racial discrimination,” said Rakim H.D. Brooks, president of Alliance for Justice. “In this case, Alabama clearly targeted Black voters for discrimination, which plainly violates the VRA. So the court was forced to do the right thing and enforce the VRA, as designed. The evidence was just too obvious here; our protections against racial gerrymandering live to see another day.”

The Alabama Republican Party was disappointed. In a statement, Chairman John Wahl said the U.S. Constitution allows state legislatures to draw district lines.

“Regardless of our disagreement with the court’s decision, we are confident the Alabama Legislature will redraw district lines that ensure the people of Alabama are represented by members who share their beliefs, while following the requirements of applicable law,” he said.

Some court watchers said the decision could make it harder for Republicans to hold the House majority because other states might have to redraw their maps as a result of the decision to account for minority representation.

John Banzhaf III, a law professor at George Washington University, said the ruling would likely reduce Republican members in Congress because Blacks, whom the opinion helps, typically vote Democrat.

“It seems that most of the complaints of unfair and biased redistricting are brought by Democrats and not Republicans, so they would be helped,” he said. “If followed and respected (rather than circumvented) by lower courts, and if the Supreme Court does not change its mind and backtrack, it should have a real-world impact.”

Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, said the ruling could lead to the election of more Black lawmakers but doesn’t guarantee more Democrats in Congress.

“It has often been noted that constructing a congressional district that has enough Black voters to virtually ensure election of a Black representative results in that district having more Democrat voters than would be necessary to elect a Democrat congressman without regard to their race,” he said. “As a result, the practice of racial gerrymandering upheld by the court today ‘wastes’ Democrat voters who could otherwise be put in other districts to help elect Democrat congressmen in those districts.”

Mr. Levey said the ruling could be concerning for the court’s other much-watched racial disputes weighing affirmative action policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina and whether admissions standards can take race into account.

“It worries me a little bit because if we were to lose Kavanaugh and Roberts in those cases, then we would not get the decision that we want,” said Mr. Levey, whose group filed briefs in the case opposing affirmative action. “I still feel hopeful. This just gives me some pause.”