The Liberty Daily 
(WND)—The Supreme Court is continuing its agenda to allow states to impose race-neutral congressional district maps with a decision to allow Alabama to abandon a plan adopted by a lower court that demanded two black-majority districts, and the 6-3 majority left Sonia Sotomayor seething in rage.
She claimed, as part of the minority, “The court today unceremoniously discards the district court’s meticulously documented and supported discriminatory-intent finding and careful remedial order without any sound basis for doing so and without regard for the confusion that will surely ensue. As with all vacaturs of this kind from this court, the district court remains free on remand to decide for itself whether Callais has any bearing on its Fourteenth Amendment analysis or if its prior reasoning is unaffected by that decision,”
The earlier Callais decision allowed Louisiana also to implement race-neutral districts.
The clashes have resulted from the fact that Republican states have started to do redistricting to favor their political party, a scheme long used by Democrat states already.
The result likely will be, according to analysts, the Republican party will pick up 10 or 15 GOP-leaning districts by the time this fall’s midterms roll around, a key sea change in the battle to control the majority in the U.S. House.
The 6-3 order had Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Jackson opposing the new agenda for race-neutral districts.
In Callais, the court discarded the use of race in the redistricting process, with Justice Samuel Alito explaining “lower courts have sometimes applied this Court’s §2 (Voting Rights Act) precedents in a way that forces states to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids.”
There were, of course, others with outrage: Hillary Clinton devotee lawyer Marc Elias called the decision interference with a state primary election.
A report at the Federalist said Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall had asked the Supreme Court for a ruling to follow up its Callais decision.
Analysts expect that there are a number of states with such race-based districts that now can be thrown out, although whether those changes all are accomplished before this year’s elections remains a question.
So far, nine states have approved new congressional mapping amid the redistricting wars.
* * *
Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@wndnewscenter.org.
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
