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The Supreme Court ruling gutted the Voting Rights Act.
That was last month, and I told you what would happen.
I told you that it would lead to the rapid reduction in Black political power.
And now that’s exactly what is happening.
The same Supreme Court that gutted the Voting Rights Act is now enforcing unfairness.
They just issued a ruling that allows Alabama to wipe out one of its only two majority Black congressional districts.
Do you care about Black voting rights?
Do you care about the midterms?
If not, I’ll tell you this, they start by stripping rights away from Black people, then they come for everyone else.
And this is all a bid to rig the midterm elections in their favor.
What Happened in Alabama
Three years ago, a three-judge federal panel ruled that Alabama’s congressional maps were intentionally designed to dilute Black voting power and ordered the state to draw new ones.
Alabama is 27% Black, and the court said the state needed at least two districts where Black voters could elect the candidate of their choice.
New maps were drawn. And in the 2024 elections, those fairer maps sent two Black Democrats to Congress.
But after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais, Republicans in Alabama sprang into action to roll it all back.
They tried to toss out the 2024 maps and return to the ones a federal court had already ruled were intentionally racially discriminatory.
That same three-judge panel blocked them, writing that they could not require Alabamians to vote under “a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”
Alabama Republicans immediately appealed, and the Supreme Court sided with them, ruling that keeping maps already in place for two years and already used in a major election would be too disruptive too close to an election.
Six hundred thousand voters. Two years of precedent. And the Court called the fairer maps the problem.
Justice Sotomayor said what needed to be said: “Just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the Court today doubles down on chaos.”
The stakes extend well beyond Alabama, with Republican-led states now rushing to redraw maps that could hand the GOP as many as 15 additional House seats before the midterms.
This is how you rig the midterm elections.
Republicans can’t win on policy alone, so they tilt the system in their favor. And the majority on the Supreme Court is helping them.
Where Will You Stand in the Civil Rights Movement of Our Day?
From the courtroom to the boardroom, the message of this episode is the same: Silence is a choice, and every institution—whether it wears a robe or a suit—will be remembered for what it did in this moment.
Alabama defied a Supreme Court order, drew a discriminatory map, and got rewarded for it.
Corporations signed their names to voting rights commitments in 2021 and are now being asked to prove they meant it.
And Black voters—who have paid for the right to vote with poll taxes, literacy tests, and blood—are watching all of it.
The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend toward justice by itself.
Voting rights and civil rights don’t happen by themselves.
They must be fought for and protected.
Will you be part of the civil rights movement of our day or be one of the moderates who prefers a “negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice?”
Do you think churches are doing enough to advocate for voting rights in this moment? How can congregations and denominations take action?
The summer cohort of The Justice Journey: A Biblical Guide to Making Wrong Things Right is underway. You have just one more chance this year to join. Sign up for the waitlist for the fall cohort.
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