A decision was handed down by the Supreme Court that took a lot of people by surprise.
Alabama was fighting to keep its district maps in place.
The Supreme Court shot the maps down, which is going to literally hand Democrats a red seat in Congress.
Devastating Blow
I cannot say this decision was unexpected because the precedent had already been set.
That, however, does not make it any less confusing to me.
There is a ruling in place regarding district maps that race cannot be the sole influencing factor, but it can be considered.
Yet, Alabama had been ordered to redraw the maps specifically to create a second district that was all black, or as close to it as they could get it.
Currently, there are six red seats and one blue, coincidentally, in the minority-dominated district.
So, by demanding an all-minority district to be drawn, you are flipping a red seat blue by the map rather than by the votes.
Alabama’s Attorney General Steve Marshall, a Republican, responded, “The 2023 plan departed from existing district lines to unify the Black Belt, it split the minimum number of county lines necessary to equalize population among districts and it made the map significantly more compact through changes to each district.”
He continued, “The court gutted the State’s discretion to apply traditional redistricting principles in 2023, by expressly refusing to defer to them when they didn’t yield the ‘right’ racial results.”
I may be mistaken in my understanding of the precedent, but I truly believe that the court got this one wrong.
Source: CNN
