The panel of three judges instead ordered Alabama to continue using a court-selected map that includes two majority-Black districts. Those congressional district lines were used in the 2024 elections.
In their decision, the judges found that the redistricting plan adopted by Alabama‘s GOP-led legislature in 2023, which state officials sought to reimplement for this year‘s House contests, intentionally discriminated on the basis of race, in violation of the Constitution‘s 14th Amendment.
Republican National Committee (RNC) Chair Joe Gruters praised the ruling in a statement provided to Fox News Digital, describing it as a „win for fairness, the rule of law, and anyone who opposes racial gerrymandering.“
„The American people don’t want to see Americans segregated by race in their congressional maps, which is exactly what was happening in Louisiana,“ he added. „Today, the Supreme Court reaffirmed a basic constitutional principle: the government cannot discriminate on the basis of race when drawing congressional maps.
DNC Chair Ken Martin, meanwhile, lamented the ruling as a „dark day for America,“ adding that the „Supreme Court just rolled back the clock on the Civil Rights Movement.“
The Supreme Court just struck down a Louisiana map that fairly represents Black voters, gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
The decision was the latest, and presumably final, chapter in a long-running dispute arising from Louisiana’s efforts to adopt a new congressional map in the wake of the 2020 census. The first map that the state adopted, in 2022, had one majority-Black district out of the six allotted to the state. A group of Black voters – who comprise roughly one-third of the state’s population – went to federal court, where they alleged that the map violated Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits discrimination in voting.
A federal judge agreed that the 2022 map likely violated Section 2, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld that ruling. It instructed Louisiana to draw a new map by January 2024 or risk having the court adopt one for it.
The map that Louisiana drew in 2024 created a second majority-Black district, leading to the election in November of that year of Cleo Fields, a former member of Congress who had represented another majority-Black district during the 1990s.
The map also prompted the lawsuit leading to Wednesday’s opinion. It was filed by a group of “non-African American” voters who contended that the 2024 map violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause by sorting voters based on race.
In the most racially charged national political ad in 30 years, President Donald Trump and the Republican Party accuse Democrats of plotting to help people they depict as Central American invaders overrun the nation with cop killers.
The new spot, tweeted by the President five days before the midterm elections, is the most extreme step yet in the most inflammatory closing argument of any campaign in recent memory.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
(…)
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
The authors of the Fourteenth Amendment were clear that the United States is one nation, with one class of citizens, and that citizenship extends to everyone born here.
Apart from a few critics, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who stated “you obviously cannot do that,” Republican officials have largely either ignored the ploy or egged it on. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) cheered Trump and noted that he has been in favor of overturning birthright citizenship for years.