Justices Kavanaugh and Alito Unite Against ‘Worn-Out Rhetoric’ About ‘Shadow Docket’ as SCOTUS Allows Alabama GOP Maps That a Court Found Were a Racial Gerrymander for Midterm Elections – By Colin Kalmbacher (Law and Crime) / February 7, 2022
After a three-judge district court found that congressional district maps were designed to dilute Black voting strength in Alabama, the Supreme Court on Monday allowed the maps to be used during the 2022 midterm elections—over the fierce and furious objections of a dissent that called attention to the conservative majority’s frequent use of the so-called “shadow docket.”
Stylized as Merrill v. Milligan, the case turns on a group of voters, civil rights groups and faith organization who filed a lawsuit alleging that Alabama’s newly drawn congressional districts impermissibly “packed” one-third of the state’s Black voters into a single congressional district while “cracking” the remaining Black voters across three congressional districts in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA).
On Jan. 24, 2022, a three-judge panel sitting on a federal district court in Alabama agreed with the plaintiffs, citing the state’s “well-documented, pervasive, and sordid history of racial discrimination in the context of voting and political participation.” The GOP’s maps were blocked, and the state was ordered to draw at least two majority Black congressional districts in line with the VRA.
