The Supreme Court shut down Alabama’s attempt to have a congressional map with only one majority-Black district for the second time on Tuesday, rejecting the state’s request to pause a lower court ruling after the Alabama government passed a congressional map that only has one majority-Black district—even after the Supreme Court ruled they must have two.
Attorney General of Alabama Steve Marshall speaks to members of the press as Solicitor General ... [+]
The Supreme Court denied Alabama’s request to pause a lower court ruling that struck down Alabama’s new map while the case is appealed, with no explanation or justices noting their dissent.
The high court ruled in June that Alabama had to redraw its map to include two majority-Black districts under the Voting Rights Act, after the state passed a map that only had one such district.
Alabama redrew its map, but continued to only have one majority-Black district, while the second district was made up of 40% Black voters.
A lower federal court then struck down that map and ordered a special master to redraw the map with two majority-Black districts ahead of the 2024 election, saying the judges were “deeply troubled that the state enabled a map that the state readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires.”
In its petition to the Supreme Court, Alabama argued that the lower court ruling was based on a “fundamental error” that the only way the state’s map could comply with the ruling was if it had two majority-Black districts, and asked the high court to pause the ruling because otherwise “the State will have no meaningful opportunity to appeal before [its new map]
is replaced by a court-drawn map that no State could constitutionally enact.”This story is breaking and will be updated.