On her second day on the bench, Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (pictured) stamped her imprimatur on the Supreme Court in hearing oral arguments over Merrill v. Milligan, the Alabama gerrymandering case that would gut what remains of the Voting Rights Act.
The “race-conscious” goal of drafters of the 14th Amendment, Brown Jackson said, was “trying to ensure that people who had been discriminated against … were actually brought equal to everyone else in society … That’s not a race-neutral or race-blinded idea.”
Reading the oral argument tea leaves, Amy Howe in SCOTUSblog expects the court’s 6-3 conservative majority to prevail in the case, in which voters and other groups have challenged Alabama’s gerrymandering that resulted in one Black majority U.S. House district of seven districts in the state. The Black population equals one-quarter of the state.
A three-judge court, including two Trump appointees, had ruled that Alabama’s new district map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but the Supreme Court last February put the decision on hold.
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