Graphic: AL Gerrymander.png; Author: GlitterantDagger; CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED
John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh were the Supreme Court justices who joined the liberal bloc to expand Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to force an extraordinary override of a state legislature. The court overruled the will of the Alabama state legislature in order to create racial quotas for congressional districts. Roberts joined despite his ruling in 2013 that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was no longer needed, and Kavanaugh concurred despite his caveat that “the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”
The fiction of liberals and federal courts pretending to prefer race-blind policies is laid bare by their racial quotas for redistricting. States should not be forced to perpetuate the balkanization of voting along racial lines, coupled with ballot harvesting strategies that in some precincts have delivered nearly every ballot for the Democrat Party.
Every ten years a new census results in states redrawing their congressional districts to account for shifting population and the gain or loss of a congressional seat. The Alabama legislature justifiably sought to keep its southwest Gulf Coast region within one congressional district because there is a community of interest there, while plaintiffs sought to break it into separate districts in order to forge a second majority-Democrat, majority-black district.
Democrats challenged the legislature’s decision based on their theory about the “Black Belt” region of Alabama, so named for the color of its rich soil and not the color of its residents. The Alabama legislature included much of this region in a district where blacks comprised 42% of its population, which should have been enough.
By racially balkanizing Alabama, the Court reduces the likelihood that a black congressman can be elected statewide as Tim Scott has been reelected as senator in South Carolina. While the loss for the state of Alabama is great, an equal disappointment is the fact that the supposedly conservative Supreme Court would support this horrendous override of state sovereignty in the name of racially motivated redistricting. We should demand better from our chief judicial officers.
