Minority voters in Alabama and Albany, N.Y., recently scored courthouse victories in challenges to redistricting plans, drawn, in the first case, by Republicans, and, in the second, by Democrats. Each case required the reviewing court to assess plans of redrawn legislative lines under certain provisions of the Voting Rights Act, and in both instances the courts maintained the unbroken line of cases upholding the constitutionality of the implicated provisions.
Alabama
In Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court evaluated whether a state redistricting plan constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. In a 5-4 decision, the court instructed the three-judge trial court to re-examine Alabama’s 2012 state legislative redistricting plan to determine whether the lines were impermissibly manipulated by racial politics.1 The appellants, African-American state legislators, contended that the 2012 redistricting plan was a ploy by the white Republicans controlling the Alabama Legislature to dilute the electoral power of black voters and blame the Voting Rights Act for compelling them to do so.2 They alleged that the map drawers concentrated—or “packed”—African-American voters into black majority districts, creating minority population percentages that were so high that their voting strength across the state was improperly reduced.
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