The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Alabama Republicans to remove the state’s second majority-Black congressional district for the midterms, handing the party a pickup opportunity in an apparent 6-3 vote.
Alabama chastised a lower court for keeping its map blocked, insisting it should move ahead in the wake of the Supreme Court narrowing the Voting Rights Act.
The justices’ emergency order allows Republicans to do so over the objections of Black voters and other challengers, who contended the design should be halted for an independent reason and it was too late for the Supreme Court to intervene, anyways.“While federal courts should not impose changes close to an election,” the justices wrote in their unsigned ruling, “States are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests.”
“Now the Court is squarely faced with a record of the turmoil it has caused and the harm it has wrought,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.