Voting Rights Act

The Alabama NAACP and the state’s League of Women Voters held a rally and issued statements against this week’s special session to possibly erase two Congressional seats, held by African American Democrats. This move follows last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Louisiana case, where the Justices ruled that race should no longer be a factor in drawing voting maps. The NAACP held a protest in Montgomery called "Pull Up The People's House."The League of Women Voters is strongly opposing the Alabama special session, which was called nineteen days before voters head to the polls for this year’s primary elections. The Alabama Public Radio news team produced a national award winning series and documentary on the creation of the new District 2 seat.

Republican governors in Alabama and Tennessee have summoned lawmakers into special sessions this week seeking new congressional districts after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Governor Kay Ivey reversed her position following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that race should not be a factor in drawing voter maps.

Alabama lawmakers gather in special session this week to possibly redraw the state's two minority-majority U.S House seats. Both are currently represented by African American Democrats. The National Association of Black Journalists, the Public Media Journalists Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists honored the APR news team for its eight month investigation into the creation of the new District 2 seat, as ordered in 2023 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Here's part one of that series from the APR archives...

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.

Pulitzer prize winning AP photographer, who captured a key moment of civil rights history in Alabama, has died. Jack Thornell’s family confirmed his death at a hospital in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie from complications from kidney disease.

Sixty-one years after state troopers attacked Civil Rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, thousands gathered in the Alabama city this weekend amid new concerns about the future of the Voting Rights Act. The March 7, 1965, violence that became known as Bloody Sunday shocked the nation and helped spur passage of the landmark legislation that dismantled barriers to voting for Black Americans in the Jim Crow South.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared ready to gut a key tool of the Voting Rights Act that has helped root out racial discrimination in voting for more than a half century, a change that would boost Republican electoral prospects, particularly across the South. Just two years ago, A earlier ruling created Alabama's new minority majority U.S. House seat in District 2, now occupied by Democrat Shomari Figures.

A Republican attack on a core provision of the Voting Rights Act that is designed to protect racial minorities comes to the Supreme Court this week, more than a decade after the justices knocked out another pillar of the 60-year-old law. Lawyers for Louisiana and the Trump administration will try to persuade the justices to wipe away the state's second majority Black congressional district and make it much harder, if not impossible, to take account of race in redistricting.