The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Tuesday in the Merrill v Milligan case, which deals with voting rights, particularly;y allegations of racial gerrymandering.
The lawsuit deals with Alabama’s congressional maps, which would give only one of the state’s seven congressional districts a real chance of electing a Black representative, even though African Americans make up about 27 percent of Alabama’s population.
In a nutshell, the case is a challenge by various groups arguing that the state violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters.
In January of 2022, a three-judge panel ruled the maps violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered the state to draw at least two districts “in which Black voters … have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.”
In February, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling reinstated the challenged maps for the 2022 midterms. The Court will now hear arguments about whether to reinstate those maps permanently, according to Vox.
Given the Court’s earlier decision in this case, and most of the justices’ record of hostility toward Voting Rights Act claims, there isn’t much doubt about who will prevail in this case.
What exactly is gerrymandering?
In the simplest terms, gerrymandering is the political manipulation of electoral district boundaries for the purpose of creating an undue advantage for a party, group, or socio-economic class within the constituency.
The manipulation may consist of diluting the voting power of the opposing party’s supporters across many districts or concentrating the opposing party’s voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts.
The term has negative connotations and gerrymandering is almost always considered a corruption of the democratic process. The resulting district is known as a gerrymander and the word is also a verb describing the process.
The case the Supreme Court will take up Tuesday centers on whether congressional districts in Alabama were drawn to reduce the political influence of Black voters, but it’s also part of a much broader problem that undermines representative government in the U.S.
Both major political parties have practiced gerrymandering — drawing congressional and state legislative boundaries to cement their hold on power for years. However, Republicans have been in control of the process in far more states since after the 2010 elections.
An Associated Press analysis from 2017 showed that Alabama had one of the most gerrymandered congressional maps in the country.
But the bottom line is this: If partisan gerrymandering “goes unchecked, it’s going to be worse — no matter who’s in charge,” said Sam Wang, director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.
