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The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the drawing of a new Alabama congressional map with greater representation for Black voters to proceed, rejecting the state’s plea to retain Republican-drawn lines that were struck down by a lower court.
In refusing to intervene, the justices, without any noted dissent, allowed a court-appointed special master’s work to continue. On Monday, he submitted three proposals that would create a second congressional district where Black voters comprise a majority of the voting age population or close to it.
A second district with a Democratic-leaning Black majority could send another Democrat to Congress at a time when Republicans hold a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives. Federal lawsuits over state and congressional districts also are pending in Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.
Alabama lost its Supreme Court case in June in which its congressional map with just one majority Black district out of seven seats was found to dilute the voting power of the state’s Black residents, who make up more than a quarter of Alabama’s population.
The game’s rules were written by people who failed to codify a lot of unwritten rules. Four or five generations on, the power-hungry are finding all sorts of ways to re-interpret the rules-as-written in the most bad-faith ways possible.