Alabama lawmakers have to redraw congressional district lines after a significant U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could affect political maps across the South for years to come.
In a 5-4 decision released Thursday, the justices upheld a key section of the Voting Rights Act as they found that a congressional map drawn by Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature after the 2020 census diluted the power of Black voters in a state where 1 in 4 residents is Black.
“The point of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act emphasizes that you cannot dilute political voting power,” said JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist, executive director of the ACLU of Alabama. “And that’s exactly what this was: a dilution of Black political voting power in the state.”
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