[U] Breaking -- Voting Rights: Supremes Rule 5-4 That Alabama GOP Cannot Intentionally Gerry-Mander Lines To Dilute Black Voting Power...

This should send a shudder through the hard right GOP forces attempting similar moves across the South.

The full 113 page opinion is here, from the emergency / shadow docket -- and a bit:

. . .In January 2022, a three-judge District Court sitting in Alabama preliminarily enjoined the State from using the districting plan it had recently adopted for the 2022 congressional elections, finding that the plan likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U. S. C. §10301. This Court stayed the District Court’s order pending further review. 595 U. S. ___ (2022). After conducting that review, we now affirm. . . .

To prove a §2 violation under Gingles, plaintiffs must satisfy three “preconditions.” Id., at 50. First, the “minority group must be sufficiently large and [geographically] compact to constitute a majority in a reasonably configured district.” Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Comm’n,. . . . “Second, the minority group must be able to show that it is politically cohesive.” Gingles, 478 U. S., at 51. And third, “the minority must be able to demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it. . . to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” Ibid. A plaintiff who demonstrates the three preconditions must then show, under the “totality of circumstances,” that the challenged political process is not “equally open” to minority voters. Id., at 45–46. The totality of circumstances inquiry recognizes that application of the Gingles factors is fact dependent and requires courts to conduct “an intensely local appraisal” of the electoral mechanism at issue, as well as a “searching practical evaluation of the past and present reality.” Id., at 79. Congress has not disturbed the Court’s understanding of §2 as Gingles construed it nearly 40 years ago. . . .

The extensive record in these cases supports the District Court’s conclusion that plaintiffs’ §2 claim was likely to succeed under Gingles. . . .

As to the. . . Gingles preconditions, the District Court determined that there was “no serious dispute that Black voters are politically cohesive, nor that the challenged districts’ white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat Black voters’ preferred candidate.” The court noted that, “on average, Black voters supported their candidates of choice with 92.3% of the vote” while “white voters supported Black-preferred candidates with 15.4% of the vote.” Even Alabama’s expert conceded “that the candidates preferred by white voters in the areas that he looked at regularly defeat the candidates preferred by Black voters.”

Finally, the District Court concluded that plaintiffs had carried their burden at the totality of circumstances stage given the racial polarization of elections in Alabama, where “Black Alabamians enjoy virtually zero success in statewide elections” and where “Alabama’s extensive history of repugnant racial and voting-related discrimination is undeniable and well documented.” The Court sees no reason to disturb the District Court’s careful factual findings, which are subject to clear error review and have gone unchallenged by Alabama in any event. . . .

[Chief Justice Roberts:] The heart of these cases is not about the law as it exists. It is about Alabama's attempt to remake our §2 jurisprudence. . . .

This may not bode well for the college admissions cases, either — at the Supremes — alleging so-called reverse discrimination. Onward. Grinning ear to ear. Sanity is making a comeback, now, and 2024 is looking pretty. . . bright (despite the wildfire haze. . . all over the nation, this mornin').

Updated: The 80 page dissent of Justice Thomas merits no considered response. It is devoid of legitimate legal reasoning, and instead simply argues to turn back the clock to a time when if you were of color, and wanted to vote -- you were required to recite the full text of the US Constitution by heart. That is all he argues for, at bottom -- a return to a "simpler" time. Disgusting.

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