Gerrymandering strictly by race is unlawful, so how can it’s required? In response to Alabama, that’s the query Tuesday on the Supreme Courtroom in Merrill v. Milligan, a case involving the state’s latest redrawing of its U.S. Home map. The brand new districts resemble the established order, with one majority-black seat within the southeast. The state says it used 2020 Census knowledge merely to enact “race-neutral changes for small shifts in inhabitants.”
However Alabama has seven Home seats, so one majority-black district comes out to 14%, whereas 26% of the state’s voting-age inhabitants is black. A federal court docket stated in January that Alabama is required by the Voting Rights Act (VRA) to create a second majority-black district, which might be 29% illustration. Is that this the regulation, or is it one other misguided effort in what Chief Justice John Roberts as soon as referred to as a “sordid enterprise, this divvying us up by race”?
