Supreme Court halts order requiring Alabama to redraw congressional map
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Alabama could move forward with its redistricting maps, overruling a lower court that had ordered the state to redraw its districts in order to give Black voters better representation.
A 5-4 majority granted a stay of a lower court's order that found the gerrymandered districts likely violated the Voting Rights Act, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the three liberal justices in dissent.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the court's stay will allow the justices to fully hear the case, pushing back the dissenters' criticism that the majority was making a sweeping ruling to gut voting rights without a full briefing from the parties.
"The stay will allow this Court to decide the merits in an orderly fashion—after full briefing, oral argument, and our usual extensive internal deliberations—and ensure that we do not have to decide the merits on the emergency docket," Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion, which was joined by Justice Samuel Alito .
Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissenting opinion that the majority's ruling undermines careful consideration applied by the judges below.
"It does a disservice to the District Court, which meticulously applied this Court’s longstanding voting-rights precedent. And most of all, it does a disservice to Black Alabamians who under that precedent have had their electoral power diminished—in violation of a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy," Kagan wrote in the opinion, which was joined by the other two liberal justices.
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It looks like Marc Elias has finally run into the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile in Ohio ... aw crap, did I just post one of those dreaded isms?
Time to cue up the old "SCOTUS is a threat to Democracy" crapola now.
They would try to pack the Court if only Biden had any political capital left.