Last week, the Supreme Court’s supermajority of six highly conservative justices issued a ruling weakening voting rights laws in Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP. Consider it the opening bugle blast on what could be a dismal season of rulings from the high court. The case is dense with details and doctrine. Here it is in a nutshell: South Carolina’s Republican legislators drew congressional district maps in a way that diminished the influence of Black voters in choosing a representative.
Last week’s decision in Alexander, with its broad safe harbor for partisan gerrymandering, effectively settles that problem at the expense of voters of color. Gerrymanderers only have to proclaim an unfair map partisan , not racial . If a gerrymander benefits white voters, that’s illegal... but if the same map can be said to merely benefit Republicans, then federal courts cannot touch it.