The Independent View: Supreme Court Decides Alabama May have Packed Black Voters into Legislative Districts

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in, Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama et. al., that Alabama should reconsider the use of race in redistricting, siding with black lawmakers and Democrats in the state in throwing out a lower court’s decision.

In its second high-stakes decision dealing with the Voting Rights Act in two years, the high court ruled 5-4 in favor of African-American lawmakers who argued that the Republican-controlled Legislature packed thousands of black voters into existing majority-black state legislative districts to maintain a GOP-advantage in the other districts. But the ruling simply called the lower court’s decision “legally erroneous” and sent the case back to them without deciding whether Alabama’s redistricting plan was unconstitutional.

“The appeals focus upon the appellants’ claims that new district boundaries create ‘racial gerrymanders’ in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause,” “We find that the District Court applied incorrect legal standards in evaluating the claims. We consequently vacate its decision and remand the cases for further proceedings.” “Alabama expressly adopted and applied a policy of prioritizing mechanical racial targets above all other districting criteria (save one-person, one-vote) provides evidence that race motivated the drawing of particular lines in multiple districts in the State.” Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the majority opinion.

When the Legislature redrew the lines after the 2010 Census, about 122,000 blacks, representing about 20 percent of the state’s black population that had been in white districts, were moved into the existing majority-minority House districts, and more than 108,000 blacks were transferred into existing majority-black Senate districts, the plaintiffs argued.

But Republican lawmakers maintained they were complying with the Voting Rights Act, a federal requirement that calls for congressional representatives to reflect the country’s racial and ethnic diversity, in moving the black voters to existing majority-minority districts.

The court’s ruling on Wednesday chips away at that argument.

Justice Anthony Kennedy was the swing vote on the case and joined the court’s four liberal justices to comprise the majority.

Writing the dissenting opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the ruling, saying the court was simply shifting the responsibility back to the lower court, costing Alabama taxpayers more money even after the Supreme Court has decided that “racial gerrymandering jurisprudence does not allow for statewide claims.” “Frankly, I do not know what to make of appellants’ arguments,” Scalia wrote. “They are pleaded with such opacity that, squinting hard enough, one can find them to contain just about anything. This, the Court believes, justifies demanding that the District Court go back and squint harder, so that it may divine some new means of construing the filings. This disposition is based, it seems, on the implicit premise that plaintiffs only plead legally correct theories. That is a silly premise.”

CLICK HERE to read the decision (PDF).