In Alabama, the Roberts Court Hands Republicans Yet Another Shocking Gerrymandering Win
For the second time in three weeks, the Roberts Court on Tuesday night green-lit an Alabama congressional map that a lower court has repeatedly found intentionally discriminates against Black voters. The ruling is another stark example of how far the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority will go to give their party additional seats in Congress and erase Black representation in the South.
Black voters comprise 27 percent of Alabama’s population, but, under a map put in place by Alabama Republicans after the justices’ Louisiana v. Callais decision that destroyed the Voting Rights Act, can expect to elect their candidate of choice in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts. Last week, after the Supreme Court told it to reexamine the case in light of Callais, a three-judge federal court panel with two Trump appointees blocked that map for November finding that the legislature’s refusal to draw a second majority-Black district despite a previous court order showed evidence of intentional discrimination against Black voters. “Ultimately, we cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,” the judges wrote in a unanimous opinion.
The ruling is a stark example of how far the court’s Republican-appointed majority will go to give their party additional seats in Congress and erase Black representation.
But the Roberts Court overturned that ruling in a truly radical four-page unsigned opinion released late Tuesday night. The court’s conservative majority claimed that the lower court “did not heed the presumption of legislative good faith,” a standard it essentially made up two years ago to insulate GOP gerrymanders from racial gerrymandering claims. In fact, the lower court found that the Alabama legislature had clearly acted in bad faith by deliberating evading court orders to create a second majority-Black district.
The majority opinion also said the lower court had failed to follow the new standards it laid out in........
