Daily Docket — Thursday, June 8

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court dropped its decision in the landmark voting rights case Allen v. Milligan. In a big win for voters, the Court struck down Alabama’s congressional map and upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Alabama will now be required to draw a new congressional map with a second majority-Black district, giving Black voters the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

A teal blue map of the United States with a pinpoint over Alabama and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Concentric blue circles reverberate out from this pinpoint across the United States. Six case captions are scattered across the map of the United States including: Agee v. Benson, Allen v. Caster, League of United Latin American Citizens v. Abbott, Grant v. Raffensperger, Nairne v. Ardoin and Thomas v. Allen.

Here’s more analysis about today’s decision.

Today’s opinion was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the Court’s three liberal justices. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the opinion for all but one part. The majority upheld Section 2 of the VRA and its current application. Read our breakdown of the opinion here.

Alabama won’t be the only state affected by today’s decision. Aside from Allen, there are currently 30 ongoing redistricting lawsuits in 10 states that stand to be impacted. These are the cases to watch now.

Here are some other updates.

A federal court in Pennsylvania denied Republican requests to dismiss lawsuits challenging ballot rules in Pennsylvania. Voting groups argue that the state's failure to count undated and wrongly dated mail-in ballots violates federal law. These cases will move forward.

States United Democracy Center published a report about bills in state legislatures that politicize, criminalize and interfere with election administration. So far in 2023, nearly 200 bills have been introduced in 38 states.

Yesterday, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed a bill establishing 14 days of in-person early voting into law.

Also yesterday, the Democratic majority of the Fulton County Commission rejected the nomination of a serial voter challenger to the county election board.

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