U.S. Supreme Court

The NAACP and ACLU are now on the clock regarding GOP plans to erase a Democratic U.S. House seat and rewrite District maps in four Congressional seats. Multiple published reports say Associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence says opponents to Alabama’s plan have a deadline by Monday to respond to the state’s request for the high court to stay a lower court ruling. The three judges on the U.S. Northern District Court wrote that the replacement maps were designed to discriminate against blacks.

Alabama on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to use a congressional map favoring Republicans in this year's elections, despite a lower court's ruling that the redistricting plan intentionally discriminates against Black people.

Clarence B. Jones, who helped argue the Alabama based U.S. Supreme Court case “New York Times v. Sullivan," has died. The civil rights activist and attorney also wrote part of the iconic “I Have A Dream” speech delivered by Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior in 1963 in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Jones was 95.

A three judge panel is ruling against the state of Alabama and its plans to erase a African American U.S. House seat. There’s also reportedly separate deadline associated with this case starting Tuesday. The three judges in the Northern District of Alabama, Southern Division, in Birmingham, says the state cannot use voting maps that delete the African American and Democratic District two.

Thousands of Louisiana voters have already cast early ballots for congressional candidates in what soon could be the wrong districts. Alabama's primaries are a week away, but the state plans a do-over for voting on U.S. House races following Monday’s SCOTUS action to allow the State to use a voting map that eliminates District 2, currently occupied by African American Democrat Shomari Figures. A new congressional map in Tennessee upended races that had been underway for months.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday set the stage for Alabama to get rid of one of two largely Black congressional districts before this year’s midterm elections, creating an opening for Republicans to gain an additional U.S. House seat in a partisan battle for control of the closely divided chamber.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey reversed her original decision to not call a special session over the state’s Congressional map. The National Association of Black Journalists, the Public Media Journalists’ Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists honored the Alabama Public Radio newsroom for its eight month investigation into the state’s newest Congressional seat, which now may be at risk. Click below to listen to APR’s special report from 2024, “…a U.S. House seat, if you can keep it.”

A Supreme Court decision striking down a majority Black congressional district in Louisiana has amplified an already intense national redistricting battle by providing Republican officials in several states new grounds to redraw voting districts. Alabama is joining in.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday hollowed out a landmark Civil Rights-era law that has increased minority representation in Congress and elsewhere, striking down a majority Black congressional district in Louisiana and opening the door for more redistricting across the country that could aid Republican efforts to control the House. Here in Alabama, the decision could decide the fate of the newly created District 2 seat, currently occupied by Democrat Shomari Figures. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are speaking out on the issue.

The Supreme Court has weakened a key tool of the Voting Rights Act that has helped root out racial discrimination in voting for more than half a century in a case concerning a Black majority congressional district in Louisiana. Back in 2023, the high court ordered Alabama, in Allen v. Milligan, to draw a second district where Black voters had a fair chance to elect their preferred representative. Today’s ruling may remove that criteria, possibly enabling Alabama’s Republican majority to redraw the map.