Thursday the US Supreme Court ordered the Alabama state government to redraw its electoral map, because the one currently used would discriminate against the black population. Alabama is governed by the Republicans and the map was modified in 2021 and used for the first time for the 2022 midterm elections: it divides the state into seven districts which each elect one representative to the House. But they have been drawn so that only one was inhabited mostly by blacks, who are 27 percent of the state’s population: that district was also the only one to elect a black representative and the only one to elect a Democrat, in the midterm elections . The practice of redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts to favor a specific electorate is widespread in the United States, and is called gerrymandering.
According to the Supreme Court, the map thus drawn would violate Section 2 of the “Voting Rights Act”, a law approved in 1965 to limit electoral discrimination against blacks and all minorities in the country: according to the law, a violation of Section 2 occurs when members of a minority “have fewer opportunities than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives”. The decision was considered rather surprising because the Court is mostly composed of conservative judges (6 out of 9): in the end two of them, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, voted together with the three more progressive and leftist judges.