The Supreme Court shocked just about everyone when conservative justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh sided with their progressive colleagues in ruling that Alabama’s newly redrawn congressional maps discriminated against black voters.
Author David Daley, senior member of voting rights group FairVote, said The new abnormals Danielle Moodie what makes the decision all the more extraordinary is that Chief Justice Roberts has been doing “his life’s work trying to gut the Voting Rights Act” for more than 35 years.
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“The Chief Justice could very well have considered this a fairly easy bone to throw away,” he said. “He is also very aware of the court’s institutional problems and the court’s ethical problems and the very poor reputation with which the American public currently views this court.”
He said while Alabama’s decision is definitely a victory for democracy, it will be interesting to see if it shapes the court’s view on future rulings.
“It’s really, really important as you do to view this decision as good news, but to view it … in the context of a court that for a decade has been drastically reducing those protections,” Daley said. “They could have said, well, not much will be lost here because if you do the math on this, even if the Democrats are able to win back a seat in Alabama, a seat in Georgia, a seat in Louisiana and two seats in Texas, the Republicans will have been able to win maybe more seats than that simply because of the mid-decade redistricting they’re going to do in North Carolina and Ohio where they’ll make some really radical partisan gerrymanders in the middle of the decade.
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