Several court battles in states throughout the South accused of racial gerrymandering will determine the voting power of Black Americans in the 2024 election and future control of Congress.
The outcomes of these redistricting cases, one of which is currently being weighed by the U.S. Supreme Court, will test the durability of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and constitutional rights for Black Americans.
They will be crucial determinants as to whether Democrats or Republicans will hold the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2025.
There are about 12 congressional maps currently in litigation that could impact the 2024 elections, which will see contests in all 435 congressional districts across the 50 states.
Of those dozen cases, half are in states where state legislatures controlled by Republicans are accused of redrawing maps to dilute the concentration of Black Americans in certain districts, also known as racial gerrymandering.
Racial gerrymandering is an illegal practice of drawing electoral district lines to deliberately suppress the voting power of Black and other racial minority groups. These maps, which stay in place for 10 years until the next time the U.S. Census is conducted, will hold significant weight in the balance of political power in Washington.Â
For your tracking, here’s what you should know:
South Carolina
In Alexander v. South Carolina NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund accuses Republican legislators of drawing a congressional map that limits the voting strength of Black residents in the state’s 1st Congressional District.Â
The plaintiff argues that South Carolina Republicans violated the 14th and 15th Amendments, ​​which guarantee equal protection under the law and prohibit race-based voting discrimination.
Despite a lower court decision in January that blocked the congressional map in agreement that it violates the civil rights of Black voters, the conservative majority on the…
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