Supreme Court Ruling Could Spell Trouble for Republicans

A conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Republican-led efforts to dilute the influence of Black voters under recently-enacted Congressional maps in several southern states Thursday, handing Democrats a surprising victory that could help tilt the electoral landscape in their favor ahead of a contentious 2024 election cycle.

In a 5-4 ruling Thursday, a conservative majority led by right-leaning Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh ruled a plan by Alabama Republicans to place the brunt of the state's sizable Black population into just one of its seven Congressional districts was a violation of the Voting Rights Acts and disproportionately diluted the voice of a demographic that makes up roughly one-quarter of the state's population.

With those maps now deemed unconstitutional, Alabama lawmakers will now likely need to redraw their maps in a way that guarantees the state's Black voters will have proportional representation in the United States Congress—a prospect most experts believe will create two Democratic-leaning districts in the 2020 election.

The surprising decision by the court will likely have ripple effects extending well beyond the borders of the Yellowhammer State.

Shortly after the completion of the 2020 U.S. Census, numerous states in the South like Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina drafted Congressional maps critics say similarly diluted the strength of minority voters in their states, prompting lawsuits from organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some of those efforts failed. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a similar case in Mississippi earlier this year, for example, per Mississippi Today, while a conservative majority on North Carolina's Supreme Court reversed a previous decision by the court disallowing a partisan gerrymander favoring Republicans earlier this spring.

Meanwhile, in Ohio, a judge on the state supreme court who was integral to rejecting a pair of Republican gerrymanders in her state last year recently announced her retirement, according to The Guardian, setting the stage for conservatives in the statehouse to go back to the drawing board to redraw maps even more to their advantage.

However, other efforts remain active and could be profoundly impacted by Thursday's decision.

In Texas, the case of Brooks v. Abbott, challenging the legality of the state's Republican-favoring Congressional maps, remains held up in the backlog of the U.S. Supreme Court, while an additional challenge to the legality of South Carolina's Congressional maps—which pack a majority of the state's Black voting population into a single, sprawling district represented by Democrat Representative Jim Clyburn—still has yet to be heard by the Supreme Court.

"We were thrilled to see the Court apply its longstanding precedent under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and affirm the lower court's preliminary injunction against Alabama's Congressional redistricting plan," Allen Cheney, an attorney for ACLU-South Carolina representing the organization in its ongoing redistricting lawsuit, told Newsweek in a statement. "This is a massive victory for one of, if not the, most important pieces of civil rights legislation in our nation's history."

While South Carolina's case differs slightly from the Alabama case, Cheney added staff was "certainly encouraged that the Court respected the trial court's findings of fact and remained committed to its own legal precedent."

"If the Court does the same in our case, I feel confident that our win will be affirmed," he said.

But Thursday's decision could also open the door to additional legal challenges in other states whose maps have faced contention from critics arguing they purposefully dilute minority voters to favor Republicans. Louisiana and Georgia—whose state legislatures passed redistricting plans with similar characteristics to Alabama's—could face renewed legal challenges to their maps on the grounds they disproportionately diminish the power of the state's voters.

If those efforts are successful, it could have profound implications for the 2024 elections.

Voter turnout is traditionally higher in presidential election years and, after an underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans currently hold a slim 10-vote majority in Congress. Meanwhile, Democratic-led redistricting efforts in states like Wisconsin and New York have already given Democrats new advantages in nearly half-a-dozen seats, leaving Democrats needing to flip just a handful nationwide to regain the majority.

Though their court victory in Alabama nets them just one seat, the implications of that decision could be significant, particularly if other states see new challenges to their maps.

"One impact of this decision: It's a boon to Democrats' chances of retaking the House in 2024," Mark Joseph Stern, a senior writer at Slate covering redistricting, wrote after the ruling. "The Supreme Court had blocked multiple lower court rulings striking down congressional maps that diluted Black voting power. At least some of those rulings should now be implemented."

Newsweek reached out to the Redistricting Project.

Update 07/08/23 2:18 p.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Allen Cheney.