Supreme Court hears Alabama voting rights case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday is hearing arguments in a high-stakes Alabama redistricting case that could determine the ability of minority voters to use Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to argue their electoral power has been diminished.

At issue in the case, Merrill v. Milligan, is the map drawn by Alabama in 2021 for its seven seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Currently, only one district is majority-Black, even though Alabama's population is 27% Black. The sole Black-majority district is the only one represented by a Democrat. Evan Milligan, who grew up in Alabama and is the executive director of Alabama Forward, which describes itself as a civic engagement group, sued, arguing the state should have two Black-majority districts. 

A lower court panel of three judges, two of whom were nominated by then-President Trump, agreed with Milligan that Alabama should draw new maps so that the state has two majority-Black districts. But Alabama argued that the only way to create two majority-Black districts is to focus solely on race, which the state argues shouldn't be a consideration.