The Supreme Court, at least for the time being, dismissed Alabama’s radical argument that part of the Voting Rights Act is in tension with the Constitution. LevinsonJessica explains.
In 2021, Alabama’s GOP-dominated Legislature drew district lines for its seven congressional seats. District lines can lead to vote dilution by both “packing” and “cracking” minority voters. Packing refers to the process of putting minority voters in one district so they cannot exercise their voting power in other districts. Imagine lawmakers drawing district lines that put 80% of the members of a minority group into one district. That’s packing.
This is exactly what challengers said the Legislature did in Alabama. Black people make up more than 1 in 4 residents in the state. But the challengers allege that under the district lines, Black people were “packed” into one district, and then “cracked” throughout the others. This means that while Black people amount to more than a fourth of the residents in the state, they can band together to select a candidate in only one of the seven districts.
This case isn’t a close call. Three judges in Alabama ruled that the state’s congressional district lines likely violated the Voting Rights Act. But a bare majority of the Supreme Court allowed those district lines to be used for the 2022 elections. That is why Thursday’s ruling is more than a bit surprising.
The court not only correctly concluded that those challenging the district lines in this case demonstrated a likelihood of succeeding in their Voting Rights Act claim, but it also — at least for now — rejected Alabama’s argument that as long as states use race-neutral factors when drawing district lines, it essentially doesn’t matter if those lines end up harming minority voting power. This would have neutered what is left of Section 2.
The court also dismissed Alabama’s even more radical argument that Section 2 itself is in tension with the Constitution. The theory is that because Section 2 guards against denying or abridging one’s vote on the basis of race, it forces lawmakers to take race into account when drawing district lines. This means that when lawmakers make race-conscious decisions, they are violating the, which forbids states from taking race into account.
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