From the Arkansas Advocate:
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakens a key part of the Voting Rights Act threatens minority representation in legislative districts in Arkansas, a state that has faced legal fights over redistricting, progressive groups said Wednesday.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority curtailed the consideration of race when drawing legislative maps.
The ruling was viewed as a major blow to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory voting practices that were adopted in many Southern states after the Civil War.
Section 2 of the law, which was challenged in the Louisiana case, has limited states’ ability to draw legislative maps that dilute the power of minority citizens.
NAACP Arkansas State Conference President Barry Jefferson said the Supreme Court’s decision “hurts really bad.”
“We have fought for many years to give Black and brown people voices,” Jefferson said. “It’s just really heartbreaking that the Supreme Court betrayed Black voters in this country again.”
American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas Executive Director Holly Dickson called the ruling “a serious blow to our democracy.”
“The result is clear: fewer protections, fewer pathways to accountability, and a growing risk that discriminatory maps will go unchecked,” Dickson said. “For Arkansans, especially voters of color, this threatens the fundamental promise of equal representation.”
Every decade, states redraw voting district boundaries based on updated census figures. Districts are drawn to have an equal number of constituents, though other factors are considered, such as keeping communities of interest together.
Arkansas’ congressional districts are redrawn by the state Legislature, which is predominantly Republican. State legislative redistricting is conducted by the Board of Appointment, which is comprised of Arkansas’ governor, secretary of state and attorney general, all of whom are Republican.
Wednesday’s ruling comes as a handful of states have taken the unusual step of redistricting prior to the decennial census after the Trump administration told Texas lawmakers last year to draw new maps to protect Republican control of the House in this year’s midterm elections.
Because members of Arkansas’ federal delegation are all Republicans and the GOP has a supermajority in the state Legislature, redistricting may not be an immediate priority for Arkansas.
However, Bill Kopsky, Arkansas Public Policy Panel’s executive director, said it’s likely there will be an effort to reduce the number of majority-minority districts in the Arkansas Legislature in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Arkansas has no majority-minority congressional districts. On the state level, four of the Senate’s 35 districts and 12 of the House’s 100 districts are majority-minority districts.
“All this gerrymandering leads to politicians choosing who votes for them instead of voters choosing who represents them,” Kopsky said.
Following the 2020 Census, the Republican-majority Arkansas General Assembly redrew the boundaries for the state’s four congressional districts.
Three lawsuits challenging those new boundaries argued that splitting Pulaski County into three of the state’s four congressional districts diluted the Black vote because the central Arkansas county is the state’s most populous and has the largest Black population.
Historically, the entirety of Pulaski County was contained within the Second Congressional District.
All three cases were dismissed.
A fourth lawsuit challenging Arkansas’ state House of Representative map also dealt with the scope of the Voting Rights Act, though that case did not ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
That lawsuit was filed by the ACLU of Arkansas on behalf of the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and Arkansas Public Policy Panel against the Arkansas Board of Apportionment who approves state district maps.
Kopsky has called for the creation of an independent redistricting commission to help prevent gerrymandering by politicians.
A federal appeals panel ruled in November 2023 that private individuals can’t sue under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, only the U.S. attorney general can enforce the law.
The panel dismissed the case, and a request to reconsider the ruling was denied in January 2024. The groups did not ask the Supreme Court to review the case.
This decision combined with the Supreme Court’s ruling Wednesday “devastate one of the last remaining tools to challenge racial discrimination in voting,” Dickson said.
Kymara Seals, Arkansas Public Policy Panel’s policy director, said protections for minority voters are still needed because of the lingering effects of Jim Crow laws and other forms of disenfranchisement throughout U.S. history.
Seals, who’s only the “second generation of free voter” in her family, noted that the U.S. is not that far removed from prohibiting African Americans and other minorities from participating in elections.
“We’re not talking about ancient history, so we still need the protections that are within the Voting Rights Act,” she said.
Jefferson argued race should be a consideration in redistricting because “Black and brown Americans live in a pocket of America” and they deserve to be represented by people who understand their needs and what they’re going through.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision, Jefferson said it’s even more important to engage people by registering voters and getting them to the polls where they can elect representatives who will make their voices heard.
“We can’t give up…we have to fight even harder,” Jefferson said. “We got to speak out even louder.”
