SCOTUS tells Alabama it meant what it said the first time

The Supreme Court delivered a brief but clear message to Alabama on Tuesday: When we said you defied the law, we meant it.

It rejected state officials’ plea for emergency intervention in the Republican-led effort to essentially sidestep a ruling from June and maintain an Alabama redistricting plan that disadvantaged Black voters.

The brief order demonstrated that while the Supreme Court remains open to curtailing the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, as it has in the past, the justices themselves want to take the lead. Alabama had pushed too far and too fast.

The justices’ action will have immediate consequences in Alabama and perhaps nationwide in the 2024 elections. The state, which is 27% Black, will now be forced to adopt a map with two Black-majority districts, among the seven congressional seats.

That is likely to mean the state will pick up a new Democratic member of Congress. Black voters lean Democratic in other states with redistricting battles underway, too, and repercussions from the wider redistricting controversy could influence whether Republicans maintain their slim majority in the US House of Representatives.

When the court first ruled, 5-4, against the Alabama map that diluted Black voting power, just three months ago, the justices were emphatic as they ordered a new plan. They said the state’s argument “runs headlong” into past decisions interpreting the protections of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.

But Alabama defied the court majority and refused to draw a new map that would give Black voters a fair opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. State officials, instead, hung their hopes on a separate statement by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who cast the critical fifth vote in the case of Allen v. Milligan after being torn for weeks in internal negotiations.

In their latest appeal to the…