The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for Alabama Republicans to pursue a congressional voting map more favorable to their party ahead of November’s midterm elections, the latest fallout from the court’s seismic voting rights ruling.
The justices lifted a lower court’s decision that had blocked state Republicans’ preferred map as racially discriminatory and for illegally diluting the voting power of Black Alabamians.
The politically conservative Southern state is expected to seek to revert to this previous map, which would drop the number of districts where Black voters comprise a majority, or near-majority, from two to one out of the state’s seven U.S. House districts. Use of the previous map could be beneficial to Republicans.
The order was powered by the nine-member court’s conservative majority. The three liberal justices dissented and suggested that the lower court could reapply its judicial block to the Alabama Republicans’ preferred map.
President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans are fighting to maintain their control of the House, as well as the Senate, in the midterm elections.
