Tuesday marks one week since the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments over another voting rights case here in Alabama.
The conservative majority on the bench appears open to making it tougher to create majority Black electoral districts. ACLU Alabama is arguing that current voter maps are unfair since they wedge African-Americans into one Congressional district. Black voters make up one quarter of the state’s population.
Latisha Gotell Faulks is Legal Director with the ACLU. She says if the Supreme Court votes in their favor, the work goes on.
“We go back to the district court,” Faulks explains. “We begin the hard work of getting maps that will reflect the interests and concerns of all Alabamians.”
Some of the conservative justices seemed sympathetic to Alabama's arguments that the court should insist on a "race-neutral" approach to drawing voting maps. That view could also make it harder for people claiming racial discrimination in voting to pursue a case in court.
Faulks says if the high court rules against them, the work will go on.
“And we will once again demonstrate that the maps in Alabama are not fair, they are not appropriate, and they must be changed,” said Faulks.
Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said before the Supreme Court's term began that she was "ready to work." The first Black woman on the high court and its newest justice made that clear during arguments in the opening cases this past week. The numbers tell the story. She reportedly spoke almost 4,600 words over nearly six hours, and that was about 50% more than any other justice.
