How the Supreme Court Could Silence Black Voters

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court yesterday vacated Alabama’s current court-ordered congressional map, despite the fact that voting has already begun in the state’s May 19 primary election. The Supreme Court’s order creates a path for Alabama to reinstate a 2023 map that a district court ruled was unconstitutional and intentionally discriminatory. The case was returned to the district court for it to reexamine its prior decision in light of the devastating and profoundly flawed ruling in Louisiana v. Callais in which the court eviscerated much of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Therefore, the plaintiffs in Milligan v. Allen returned to the district court yesterday to ask for a temporary restraining order to keep the current court-ordered map in place on the claim Callais left untouched: the court’s finding that Alabama intentionally discriminated against Black voters when it drew the 2023 map. Plaintiffs are asking the court to keep the current court-ordered map because people are already voting under it. In 2021, Milligan plaintiffs challenged a 2021 Alabama congressional map that unlawfully diluted Black political power. In 2023, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s ruling striking down the 2021 map. That same year, the Alabama Legislature drew another map. After weeks of trial, the district court ruled that Alabama’s 2023 map had a discriminatory result in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and that the Legislature had intentionally discriminated against Black voters in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The court struck down the 2023 map and ordered the use of Alabama’s current court-drawn congressional map. This map was used in the 2024 election, and voters have already cast ballots with it in Alabama’s ongoing 2026 primary elections. The Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday temporarily removes the current court-ordered congressional map and comes on the heels of Callais, which gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and struck down a remedial map with two majority-Black districts enacted by the Louisiana Legislature. But Callais did not involve a constitutional intentional discrimination claim and the court’s ruling did not affect claims of intentional discrimination — the separate, independent ground on which the district court struck down Alabama's 2023 map. That finding in the Alabama case remains wholly untouched. The plaintiffs in the Milligan case are Evan Milligan, Khadidah Stone, Letetia Jackson, Shalela Dowdy, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, who are represented by the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Alabama, Hogan Lovells LLP, and Wiggins, Childs, Pantazis, Fisher & Goldfarb. In response to yesterday’s order, plaintiffs and counsel issued the following statement: “The Supreme Court’s action is the latest in a pattern of decisions that undermine the rights of Black voters. The court’s decision is designed to entrench power in the hands of the few at the expense of Black voters who have been denied equal rights at every turn. It also flies in the face of the decision it issued in this case less than three years ago. This order is also contrary to longstanding precedent that has, until yesterday, forbidden changing the rules too close to an election. With voting already underway, the court has created chaos for Alabama election officials and voters. “In 2023, the Alabama Legislature intentionally sought to deny Black voters fair representation in government. Permitting Alabama to use, for the very first time, the 2023 map in elections when voters have already legally cast ballots is an affront to the very ideals of democracy. The Supreme Court’s order rushes to displace the remedial map approved by the district court, and paves the way for Alabama to implement an extreme gerrymandered map that violates the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act. “We have already returned to court to reinstate the court-ordered map, and we will keep fighting on every front to protect the rights of Black voters in Alabama.” The TRO filing is here.

The Supreme Court recently made a ruling that blows open the door for states and localities to create discriminatory voting maps. Here’s what you need to know about redistricting and voting rights in light of this decision.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit today challenging Tennessee’s discriminatory new congressional redistricting map. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three individual Memphis voters, as well as the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, the Memphis A. Philip Randolph Institute, and the Equity Alliance, who are seeking to block the map from taking effect before the August primary election. Tennessee has had a Memphis-based congressional district for the better part of a century. The challenged map dismantles that district, which is the state’s only majority-Black congressional district. It divides Black voters in Memphis and Shelby County across three majority-white districts that stretch from Memphis hundreds of miles into central Tennessee, diluting Black Memphians’ votes and stripping those communities of any meaningful voice in Congress. “Black voters in Memphis did exactly what the Constitution empowers every American to do, which is to choose their representative,” said ACLU of Tennessee Executive Director Miriam R. Nemeth. “The legislature’s response was an effort to ensure that those votes never carry the same weight again. The law has a name for this, and it’s not redistricting, it is textbook First Amendment retaliation. And it is, at its heart, racism.” A white-controlled supermajority of the Tennessee General Assembly enacted the new map targeting Black Memphians over mere days in a special legislative session that had been called after the candidate-qualifying deadline had already run. The process for drawing and enacting the maps was unprecedented and suspect. Mid-decade congressional redistricting has been illegal under state law for over 50 years. The General Assembly has never engaged in mid-decade congressional redistricting in its modern history, let alone done so at warp speed, with no public debate, and in May of an election year. The map’s white sponsors never disclosed basic facts about the map, like who drew it, or what data was used. “Every American schoolchild learns that, not so long ago, white-controlled governments in some states exercised total power to discriminate, punish, and shut Black citizens out of power. Schoolchildren also learn that we overcame that injustice, through great struggle and sacrifice, and that our deepest-held constitutional values triumphed in the end. But today, again, a white-dominated faction is viciously stripping hard-won power from Black Tennesseans,” said Ari J. Savitzky, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “We seek to enforce the Constitution’s fundamental guarantees in the face of this all-too-familiar injustice. We ask the courts to strike these maps down.” The recent Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, stripping a critical federal protection against decades of discriminatory voting systems. It opened the door for states to try to enact discriminatory maps. The complaint asserts that the Tennessee map violates the U.S. Constitution on two grounds: Intentional racial discrimination against Black voters in Memphis. First Amendment retaliation against Black voters in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District for exercising their right to political expression and association. The lawsuit asks the court to declare the new map unconstitutional and to restore the prior congressional district lines before any primary election proceeds under the new boundaries. The complaint is here.