The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision reaffirms the essential
role of the Voting Rights Act.

How the Supreme Court blocked Alabama's effort to dilute Black
voting power

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Jack Genberg     Read the full piece here

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Friend,

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision ordering the state of
Alabama to draw a new congressional voting map reaffirms the essential
role of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in ensuring that communities of
color have the opportunity to be fairly represented in our political
system.

On June 8, the court found that Alabama's congressional map
violated Section 2
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of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) by diluting the votes of Black
Alabamians.

The historic ruling
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in Allen v. Milligan means that Alabama must redraw the map to
include a second congressional district in which Black voters have an
opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.

Even though Black people comprise 27% of the population in Alabama,
the Legislature enacted a gerrymandered map that "cracked"
the Black population, dividing it up so much that the map created just
one majority-Black district out of seven in the state.

With this ruling, the court upheld nearly 40 years of its precedents
by applying the legal framework of Thornburg v. Gingles
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, the seminal vote dilution case.

In its reasoning, the court recited the three preliminary legal
requirements that the plaintiffs had to satisfy to win under Gingles.
First, the Black voting-age population is sufficiently large and
geographically compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably
configured district. Second, Black citizens vote in a politically
cohesive way. And third, white citizens vote as a bloc to defeat Black
voters' preferred candidates.

Read More

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