WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a congressional electoral map drawn in the southern state of Alabama discriminated against Black voters. The 5-4 decision by the conservative-majority court is a surprise victory for the Voting Rights Act, which was passed by Congress during the civil rights movement in 1965 to prevent racial discrimination against minorities in elections. The Alabama case concerns a map that was redrawn in 2021 by Alabama´s Republican majority legislature to allocate seats in the US House of Representatives.
Under the map, Black voters -- who represent around a quarter of registered voters statewide -- are in a majority in only one of Alabama´s seven House districts. African Americans in Alabama tend to vote Democratic while white voters in the state mostly support Republicans. Citizens and rights groups took the Alabama redistricting map to court, accusing legislators of violating the Voting Rights Act which prohibits diluting the African American vote. Chief Justice John Roberts and another conservative, Brett Kavanaugh, sided with the three liberal justices in upholding a lower court ruling ordering Alabama to redraw the congressional map to include a second district with a large African American population. Republican officials in Alabama had appealed the lower court ruling to the Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority, and the nation´s highest court heard the case in October.