In a surprise decision, the Supreme Court agreed that Alabama violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the Black vote when it drew new congressional maps following the 2020 census.

The 5-4 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts found that Alabama Republicans improperly denied Black communities a second congressional district by packing them into one district and splitting them into other majority white districts. The decision was joined by liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson and conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The decision in Allen v. Milligan comes as a shock as the courts conservatives have repeatedly gutted the Voting Rights Act in cases over the past decade including Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee .

In his decision, Roberts firmly rejected Alabamas arguments in favor of a new race-neutral standard to govern racial gerrymandering cases brought under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as novel.

The heart of these cases is not about the law as it exists, Roberts wrote. It is about Alabamas attempt to remake our [Section 2] jurisprudence anew.

Alabama will now be required to redraw its congressional district map to provide for a second majority-Black district. The decision will have extended consequences too as both plaintiffs in Louisiana and Georgia claimed similar racial discrimination in redistricting in cases that were pending at the Supreme Court. This could lead to the creation of one new Black-majority district in each state.

The case came about after Alabama Republicans , who dominate the states politics, drew a new congressional district map that cracked the Black community across the historic Black Belt (named for its soil), splitting the predominantly Black city of Montgomery into three majority-white congressional districts while packing the rest of the states Black community into the 7th District.