WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative wing considered limiting the creation of majority-Black voting districts, even amid forceful pushback from new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The court is considering whether Alabama must draw a second heavily Black congressional district for a state that has seven House seats and a 27% Black population. The case could deliver a fresh blow to the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 law designed to protect minority voters at the ballot box.
In a nearly two-hour argument session, Jackson, the court’s first Black female member, bristled at suggestions from a lawyer for Alabama that redistricting needed to be done in a race-neutral way. She said the framers of the post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution were focused on racial inequalities and understood they were authorizing Congress to address them.
