Jurisprudence
June 03, 202610:42 AM
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On Tuesday evening, in an unsigned shadow-docket order, the Supreme Court awarded Alabama a massive victory in its long-running campaign to crush Black residents’ political representation. Under the guise of soberly reinstating Alabama’s elections-as-usual, and over the dissents of the three liberal justices, the Republican-appointed supermajority halted the latest in a long line of judicial efforts to end blatant discrimination by the state legislature against its own Black voters. The high court thus rammed into place a 2023 map that transforms a diverse, Democratic congressional district into an overwhelmingly white, Republican one by ruthlessly carving up Black communities into electoral oblivion. This map has been deemed unlawful multiple times for intentionally discriminating against voters on the basis of race, and yet SCOTUS has now ensured that it will be the operative map for Alabama’s midterms. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her 14-page dissent to the brief, bloodless order, the court’s “unconscionable” intervention “disregards both democratic values and the rule of law.”
