Voting Rights Act of 1965

A federal judge has ordered Alabama to use a new state Senate map in upcoming legislative elections after ruling that districts drawn by lawmakers illegally diluted the voting power of Black residents in the state’s capital city. U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco, appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, issued the ruling Monday putting a new court-selected map in place for the 2026 and 2030 elections.

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.

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered Alabama’s largest county to redraw county commission lines after ruling that the districts were unconstitutional because of racial gerrymandering. Alabama Public Radio's international news coverage has focused on similar coverage around the state.

The Alabama Public Radio news team was recognized by the National Association of Black Journalists with a national “Salute to Excellence” award. The honor was announced at the group’s 50th anniversary convention in Cleveland over the weekend. APR received the national award for “Best Public Affairs Segment."

Federal judges ordered Alabama to continue using a court-selected congressional map for the rest of the decade, but they declined to put the state back under the pre-clearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act. The decision is to keep the U.S. House district 2 map in place until 2030. What happens after that appears unclear. The APR news team spent eight months investigating issues surrounding the new U.S. House seat along the state’s “black belt.” Congressman Shomari Figures was interviewed about the new district on “APR Notebook.”

Federal judges on Tuesday sharply questioned lawyers on a request to make Alabama subject again to the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act after courts ruled the state intentionally diluted the voting strength of Black residents.

Senate Democrats reintroduced a bill Tuesday to restore and expand protections enshrined in the Voting Rights act of 1965, their latest long-shot attempt to revive the landmark law just days before its 60th anniversary and at a time of renewed debate over the future administration of American elections. The bill is named for the late John Lewis, who was injured during the 1965 attack on voting rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

Charles Mauldin was near the front of a line of voting rights marchers walking in pairs across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965. The marchers were protesting white officials' refusal to allow Black Alabamians to register to vote, as well as the killing days earlier of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a minister and voting rights organizer who was shot by a state trooper in nearby Marion. APR listeners heard from marchers as young as fourteen.

Voters in rural Alabama will soon 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. This may sound like a one-of-a-kind event, but it’s not.

This story isn’t part of Alabama Public Radio’s investigative series on the newly redrawn Congressional seat in District 2—But it could provide an interesting perspective—from the view from the former Soviet nation of Belarus.