This map has a problem.
It's a map of Alabama's seven congressional districts
that are a result of gerrymandering,
meaning these lines have been drawn
in a way that favors one political party.
In this case, Republicans.
A lot of the time, gerrymandering is visually obvious,
like when it produces weird looking districts like this...
this... this...
In Alabama, there's one district
that kind of looks like a dolphin.
But the problem with this map is actually much harder to spot
until you bring in another map.
This one shows Alabama's Black population.
Now, mash these two maps together,
and you'll see that one of the districts
has most of the Black population.
On June 8th, in a decision
that was called "unexpected,"
a "surprise," and a "victory for voting rights advocates," the US
Supreme Court struck down this map for being illegal.
So what exactly is so bad about this map?
And why is this decision
such a big deal?
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
said a number of things, but it had two main pillars.
One said that certain
parts of the country had to get permission from the federal government
before changing any of their voting laws.
In 2013
that part of the law was struck down by the Supreme Court.
And these places were now free to pass new voting restrictions
and close hundreds of polling locations without any oversight.
And a lot of them did.
The vote in the Supreme Court was 5-4.
The five conservative justices over the four liberal justices.
And since that time, the Supreme Court
has moved farther to the right.
There are now six conservative justices
and three liberal justices.
And that's not great news
for the remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act,
Section Two, which broadly bans
denying the right to vote on account of race.
Over the years, Section Two
has been amended to include not just the right to vote, but the right
to elect representatives.
In response to that, many states have drawn districts
in which a racial minority
is more than 50% of the population: What are called
"majority-minority districts."
That's what we're looking at here.
The idea is that these districts can help minorities
elect representatives of their choice,
which should lead to better
proportional representation from a state.
And that's where this map starts
to have a problem.
In Alabama, there are six districts
in which white people are the majority
and one where Black people are the majority.
These are the Congressional representatives from those seven
total districts.
One Black district out of seven is about 14%.
But 27% of Alabama's population is black,
which is closer to two out of seven.
And that's why a group of black voters sued Alabama.
The question for the Supreme Court was, in part,
whether additional majority-minority districts can be drawn.
And the court decided, yes.
Here's the map of the state's Black population again.
Put the current districts back on, and you can see
two classic gerrymandering moves.
One is that Black voters in the western part of the state
have been "packed" into one district.
This part is actually not so sinister.
To some degree, it's what enables the creation of a majority-
minority district in the first place.
But look at the group of black voters
over here, and you can see that that group has been split
between two districts, diluting their influence in both.
That population has been "cracked."
And it wouldn't be hard to fix that.
When this case was heard in a lower court,
a mathematician presented multiple ways to draw lines that would create
two compact majority black districts.
The Supreme Court agreed.
Their decision left
the remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act intact.
And again by a vote of 5-4, but this time
with two of the conservative justices
voting with the liberals.
That part was the surprise.
But the reason this decision is such
a big deal is because of what it might do
outside of Alabama.
When the population of our state
is one-third African American,
and we know that it is, then simple
math and simple fairness
means that two of those districts need to be
minority districts.
That's the governor of Louisiana, acknowledging
a very similar situation as Alabama.
And now, with the Supreme Court ruling,
Louisiana could also be forced
to draw a second majority black district.
Georgia, Florida and Texas have similar problems
with their maps and are now being challenged in court.
Even if just one district changes
hands in each of these states,
the consequences could actually be huge.
Because this is where representatives
from all those districts go: the US Congress.
Which, you can't even really tell from this,
but right now, it's under Republican control
by a teeny margin.
Ten votes out of 435.
If one of those seats changes
parties, that becomes a margin of eight,
another one, six and so on.
You don't need that many seats to switch
for control of Congress to flip completely.
So the implications for the 2024 election are huge.
We do not really know why these two conservative
justices chose to preserve the Voting Rights Act.
Was Alabama's case just particularly weak?
Is it a response to the heat
the court's taken over some very conservative decisions?
No matter the reason though,
the fact that this one state's map is now illegal
is a big deal for the whole country.