{"id":25480,"date":"2023-06-08T17:30:55","date_gmt":"2023-06-08T21:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=25480"},"modified":"2023-06-08T17:30:55","modified_gmt":"2023-06-08T21:30:55","slug":"alabama-violated-voting-rights-law-supreme-court-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2023\/06\/08\/alabama-violated-voting-rights-law-supreme-court-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Alabama violated voting rights law, Supreme Court rules"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The US Supreme Court has ruled that an Alabama electoral map violated federal law prohibiting racial discrimination in voting.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The 5-4 decision backed a lower court’s ruling that the state’s Republican-drawn map had diluted the voting power of black Alabamians.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The map, outlining the state’s seven districts for the US House of Representatives, was approved in 2021.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The ruling preserves a key element of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Two of the court’s six conservative justices, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, sided in Thursday’s opinion with its three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The ruling means that Alabama will have to redraw its congressional map to include a second majority-black district.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Although the state’s voting-age population is about 27% black, the current congressional map has one majority-black district.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The majority-black district is currently the only Democratic one in the state. The other six are represented by Republicans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When Alabama lawmakers redrew the maps two years ago, civil rights groups accused them of breaching the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory voting practices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Federal judges blocked the map in early 2022, ruling that it violated the Voting Rights Act and gave black voters “less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Alabama Republicans appealed against the lower court’s decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Supreme Court allowed the existing congressional map to stand for last year’s midterm elections, while it considered the case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Thursday’s ruling surprised some given that the justices have chipped away at the Voting Rights Act in two major rulings over the past decade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas – the second African American to serve on the court – said the Voting Rights Act should not apply to redistricting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He was joined by three other conservative justices, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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US Attorney General Merrick Garland welcomed the majority ruling, saying it upheld the principle that voters should be “free from discrimination based on their race”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Congresswoman Terri Sewell, the lone Alabama Democrat, tweeted that the decision was “amazing” for black voters.on Twitter.<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Supreme Court has ruled that an Alabama electoral map violated federal law prohibiting racial discrimination in voting. The 5-4 decision backed a lower court’s ruling that the state’s Republican-drawn map had diluted the […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,109,2,3],"tags":[3558,311,6713,1310,7868],"class_list":{"0":"post-25480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-human-rights","8":"category-headline","9":"category-news","10":"category-usa","11":"tag-alabama","12":"tag-discrimination","13":"tag-us-house-of-representatives","14":"tag-us-supreme-court","15":"tag-voting-rights-act","16":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25480"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25484,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25480\/revisions\/25484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}