The Major SCOTUS Ruling On Racial Redistricting

Yesterday's ruling by the Supreme Court on Alabama's discriminatory Congressional districts is expected to have far-reaching impacts on other Republican-dominated states trying to minimize African-American voting impact through gerrymandering. Coming as a surprise, given the right-wing makeup of the Court's majority, the ruling actually bolstered section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which the Court had previously weakened with its decision in Shelby v. Holder in 2013. The New York Times article looks at the impacts of the Alabama decision beyond that state's borders, and potentially to the future control of Congress:

"The ruling could result in multiple Southern states having their maps struck down through pending Voting Rights Act challenges.

In Louisiana, where Black voters make up one-third of the population, a case before the Supreme Court had been put on hold pending the Alabama decision. Now a second majority-Black district could be drawn.

'We know that in compliance with the principles of the Voting Rights Act, Louisiana can and should have a congressional map where two of our six districts are majority Black,' Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, a Democrat, said on Thursday. 'Today’s decision reaffirms that.'

The Supreme Court decision is also expected to send legislators in Georgia back to the drawing board for their congressional maps. On Thursday, a federal judge in a pending Georgia case asked both parties to provide supplemental materials in light of the new ruling.

And in Texas, where Republicans drew an aggressive gerrymander that could lock in power for a decade, nine cases in the federal court system could be affected by Thursday’s decision, according to a tracker kept by the Brennan Center for Justice, a think tank.

Across the South, the decision raises the prospect of adding three majority-Black districts in reliably red states, changes that would upend what will be a pitched battle for control of the House of Representatives next year."  (our emphasis)

We're hoping the estimate of "three majority-black districts" in red states can be doubled or more, now that the conservative Supreme Court has rejected blatant attempts by the Republican / New Confederate / Shooters party to compress African-American voters into the fewest Congressional districts possible. Now, there's a real chance beginning in 2024 that Congressional elections in the South will reflect the population mix, rather than the desire of Republicans to choose their electorate.