Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

From today’s Reuters News:

 The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices on Tuesday appeared sympathetic toward Alabama in the state’s defense of a Republican-drawn electoral map faulted by judges for diluting the clout of Black voters in a major case that could further undermine a landmark federal voting rights law.

In spirited oral arguments lasting nearly two hours, Alabama Solicitor General Edmund LaCour faced tough questioning from the court’s three liberal justices – Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

2020 Super Tuesday in Alabama
Voters cast ballots for 2020 Democratic Primary Election inside of a polling station at the Selma Fire Station on Super Tuesday in Selma, Alabama , U.S., March 3, 2020. REUTERS/Michael A. McCoy

Some of the conservative justices, however, appeared open to certain of LaCour’s defenses of the map devised by the state’s legislature delineating the boundaries of Alabama’s seven U.S. House of Representatives districts. An eventual ruling siding with Alabama could make it harder to prove that state voting laws harm minorities. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority.

A three-judge federal court panel invalidated the map after it was challenged as unlawful by Black voters. But the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision in February, let Alabama use the map for the Nov. 8 U.S. congressional elections in which Republicans are trying to regain control of Congress.

The dispute gives the court’s conservatives a chance to further roll back protections contained in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.

Read the complete story here.

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By Editor