Voting Rights Act

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.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said that she will not call a special session to draw new Alabama Senate districts after a federal judge ruled the current map violates the Voting Rights Act.

A federal judge on Friday ordered Alabama lawmakers to draw new state Senate districts after ruling the state violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the influence of Black voters around the capital city.

All sides are preparing arguments for a three judge panel over how Alabama draws future voting maps. A three-judge federal panel has scheduled a hearing one week from today on whether federal oversight is needed for Alabama. Criticism was made over how conservative handled the creation of the new minority U.S. House seat in District two.

Alabama Public Radio was among the news organizations to be recognized during the Society of Professional Journalists “Green Eyeshade Awards,” which observed its seventy fifth anniversary as the nation’s oldest and largest regional competition to judge the best journalism in the southeast. APR received a First Place for “Best Documentary” for its eight month investigation into Alabama’s newly redrawn U.S. House Seat in District two, in the state’s impoverished Black Belt region.

An Alabama U.S. House seat APR spotlighted in a eight-month investigation apparently got support from a three-judge federal panel. Their ruling states the Alabama legislature pushed an alternative voting map that intentionally discriminated against black voters. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state to redraw its voting districts to better represent African Americans.

2025 includes three key anniversaries in the Alabama civil rights movement. This December will mark seventy years since the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 2025 is also the sixtieth anniversary of the shooting of civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson, which led to the March 7th demonstration over the Edmund Pettus bridge that culminated in Bloody Sunday. The city of Selma will remember that day with this weekend’s bridge crossing jubilee.

Voters in rural Alabama will cast historic votes this November. It’s the first time residents in the newly redrawn Congressional District two will pick their member of the U.S. House. It took a fight before the U.S. Supreme Court to create the new map to better represent African Americans in Congress. That’s what the high court seems to want. Now, let’s look at how things are and the impact that has on Terri Sewell. She’s the only Congressional Democrat in Alabama and the only African American…

A federal judge on Friday refused to stay an injunction against a portion of a new Alabama law that limits who can help voters with absentee ballot applications. Chief U.S. District Judge David Proctor last week issued a preliminary injunction stating that the law's ban on gifts and payments for help with an absentee ballot application "are not enforceable as to blind, disabled, or illiterate voters."