Sotomayor Rips Supreme Court’s “Inappropriate” Decision on Alabama

Source: The New Republic · Bias: Left

Summary

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional map that disregards one of two majority-Black voting districts in the state—a decision that one justice predicted would cause “chaos” and “confusion.”All three of the court’s liberal justices dissented against Monday’s order, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned the counter-argument. In five concise pages, Sotomayor flamed her conservative colleagues for the ruling, arguing that it was “inappropriate” for the court to alter the state’s voting lines mere days before the primary. She noted that Alabama had already been found to have violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of its Black voters.“The Court today unceremoniously discards District Court’s meticulously documented and supported discriminatory-intent finding & careful remedial order without any sound basis for doing so and without regard for the confusion that will surely ensue,” Sotomayor said in her dissent, noting that the decision will “cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.”The high court’s order will allow Alabama’s GOP leaders to redraw electoral boundaries, offering a path for the party to eliminate one or both Democratic seats in the House and potentially imperil Democratic Representative Shomari Figures.The ruling was made possible by the court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act late last month.Black voters in Alabama had fought for years to have their voices heard, navigating the legal system to carve out another Black-majority voting district in the red Southern stronghold.“We are witnessing a return to Jim Crow. And anybody who is alarmed by these developments—as everybody should be—better be making a plan to vote in November to put an end to this madness while we still can,” NAACP National President Derrick Johnson said in a statement to the Associated Press.

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Sotomayor Rips Supreme Court’s “Inappropriate” Decision on Alabama
The New Republic

Sotomayor Rips Supreme Court’s “Inappropriate” Decision on Alabama

Left

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional map that disregards one of two majority-Black voting districts in the state—a decision that one justice predicted would cause “chaos” and “confusion.”All three of the court’s liberal justices dissented against Monday’s order, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned the counter-argument. In five concise pages, Sotomayor flamed her conservative colleagues for the ruling, arguing that it was “inappropriate” for the court to alter the state’s voting lines mere days before the primary. She noted that Alabama had already been found to have violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of its Black voters.“The Court today unceremoniously discards District Court’s meticulously documented and supported discriminatory-intent finding & careful remedial order without any sound basis for doing so and without regard for the confusion that will surely ensue,” Sotomayor said in her dissent, noting that the decision will “cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.”The high court’s order will allow Alabama’s GOP leaders to redraw electoral boundaries, offering a path for the party to eliminate one or both Democratic seats in the House and potentially imperil Democratic Representative Shomari Figures.The ruling was made possible by the court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act late last month.Black voters in Alabama had fought for years to have their voices heard, navigating the legal system to carve out another Black-majority voting district in the red Southern stronghold.“We are witnessing a return to Jim Crow. And anybody who is alarmed by these developments—as everybody should be—better be making a plan to vote in November to put an end to this madness while we still can,” NAACP National President Derrick Johnson said in a statement to the Associated Press.

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