Court’s liberals defend Voting Rights Act
Alabama is appealing order to redraw map so Black voters have a shot at second district.
The court faces a showdown this term over whether race may be considered in drawing election districts or to improve equality and diversity in college admissions, or whether considering race for any reason should be illegal.
The court’s conservatives, in a 5-4 vote, intervened for Alabama in February, blocking judges who had required the state to draw a second congressional district with a near majority for Black residents. About 27% of the state’s population is Black, but only one of its seven districts has elected a Black candidate.
Raising the stakes, lawyers for Alabama urged the court Tuesday to rule broadly that the Constitution and Voting Rights Act forbid the state from taking any steps to give Black residents more equal representation.
Elections in Alabama are “equally open to all voters,” said state Solicitor General Edmund LaCour, adding that it would be wrong to “discriminate in favor of one group” by intentionally drawing an election district where Black residents made up the majority.
He had barely begun his argument when Justices Elena Kagan and Jackson interrupted to assert that the Voting Rights Act indicates that racial fairness requires considering race at times.
Kagan said that the Voting Rights Act was “one of the great achievements of American democracy,” and that its aim was to end the era of racial exclusion with a rule of equal opportunity.
“You are asking us to cut back on 40 years of precedent” and to make it extremely hard, she said, for Black candidates to win elections in places like Alabama, where voting is “incredibly polarized” based on race.
Jackson took on conservatives’ assertion that the Constitution itself is blind to race, noting that the post-Civil War amendments at issue in the case were adopted in response to slavery.
“The framers adopted the 14th and 15th Amendments in a race-conscious way” because people had been discriminated against due to their race. “That was not a race-neutral or race-blind idea,” she said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor sounded the same theme, and the liberals were joined for much of the argument by conservative Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. He said the evidence showed that Alabama could create a second Black-majority district that would not be oddly shaped or “bizarre.”
It was unclear from the arguments how the court is likely to rule. Most of the conservative justices said little.
Only Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. appeared to take Alabama’s side. He said the map makers would have to focus on race to draw a second Black-majority district, which would be questionable under the law.
Civil rights advocates fear the court’s conservative majority is prepared to make it much harder for Black and Latino voters to win representation in Congress, state legislatures and city councils.
Congress bolstered the Voting Rights Act in 1982 to prohibit election maps that denied racial minorities an equal chance to “elect representatives of their choice.” That forced states to redraw election districts, where possible, that would have a majority or near majority of Black or Latino voters.
But Alabama’s lawyers argue that using race as a factor in drawing election districts is an illegal “racial gerrymander.”
The case is Merrill vs. Milligan.
If the high court rules in favor of Alabama, Republicans across the South could benefit, as Democrats would find it harder to win seats in Congress and statehouses with Black voters’ support diluted.
