A harbinger of Supreme Court decisions to come in this term? Or just an example of overreach by Alabama Republicans? One way or the other, the “surprising” 5-4 decision in Allen v Milligan.
A harbinger of Supreme Court decisions to come in this term? Or just an example of overreach by Alabama Republicans? One way or the other, the “surprising” 5-4 decision in Allen v Milligan has Democrats singing the praises of the Supreme Court for today, at least.
The decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Brett Kavanaugh and all three liberal justices rejects an attempt to redefine the Voting Rights Act Section 2 with a new “race neutral” model. As the Associated Press notes, the “surprise” was that the court allowed the legislative map in question for the 2022 election while considering the challenge, which most took as a sign that the plaintiffs would lose:
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the court’s liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling that found a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in an Alabama congressional map with one majority Black seat out of seven congressional districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black. The state now will have to draw a new map for next year’s elections.
The decision was closely watched for its potential effect on control of the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives. Because of the ruling, Republican-led legislatures in Alabama and Louisiana will have to redraw maps so that they could increase Black representation.
The outcome was unexpected in that the court had allowed the challenged Alabama map to be used for the 2022 elections — and in arguments last October the justices appeared willing to make it harder to challenge redistricting plans as racially discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Clearly at least Roberts changed his mind. He had himself signaled a skepticism about the existing Section 2 test (Gingles) and an openness to reconsidering it. In the decision syllabus, however, Roberts reverts back to Gingles and over 40 years of its controlling precedent. If the court got it wrong in Gingles, Roberts writes in the syllabus, Congress has had plenty of time to amend Section 2 to impose a different test:
Alabama’s understanding of §2 would require abandoning four decades of the Court’s §2 precedents.
