There has been no end to armchair critics of the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) June 2 per curiam order, which favored Alabama's ability to use 2023 maps that only included one majority-minority district. Frequently, the majority of the people who are all in the Kool-Aid don't even know the flavor.
Such is the case with this bizarre and unsupported tome by one Atlantic writer, staff writer Adam Serwer, whose June 6 story started in hyperbole and ended in presumption.
This week, the Roberts Court made clear that when it comes to drawing congressional districts, Black voters have no rights that anyone is bound to respect.
This writer should have quit while he was behind. This lumping of "Black voters" into one (Democrat) monolith is the reason why this nonsense has been allowed to go on for so long. Of the 3.8 million registered voters in Alabama, roughly 22 percent (849,602) are Black. While a large percentage of those voters live in the Black Belt counties around Birmingham and Mobile, we are spread throughout the state and our voting patterns are vastly different from those mostly Democrat strongholds. The per curiam order slapping down the lower court points to this:
The District Court also failed to follow our instruction in Callais that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns. See id., at ___ (slip op., at 30).
So, despite the peanut gallery screaming about "Black voter dilution," and losing Black representation, it's not happening. Two counties which tend to primarily vote Democrat - out of the 67 counties which make up Alabama - does not a pattern make.
But Serwer goes on with his ill-informed take, in the story linked above:
The state was making a gamble that the Roberts Court was more partisan than sincere. And it paid off: On Tuesday, the Court allowed Alabama to proceed with a map that diminishes Black voting power to the advantage of Republicans. For all the Court’s pretenses—all of its insistence on the rule of law, precedent, and good faith—many critics and supporters of the Roberts Court see the institution as an appendage of the Republican Party. The only thing that distinguishes the critics from the supporters is whether they think that is a good thing.
No, the only thing that distinguishes the critics from the supporters are those who are not partisan hacks, and those who have actually analyzed the Alabama constitution, the case law involved, and what the lower court failed to do in light of the Louisiana v. Callais SCOTUS decision.
As RedState has extensively reported, Alabama petitioned the court not once, but twice, to get their 2023 maps restored after a three-judge panel of the United States District Court of Northern Alabama deemed them discriminatory, according to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Not only that, but this lower court went even further:
A court-appointed special master ultimately created a new map, which the district court ordered the state to use going forward. In 2025, the court ruled after a trial that the 2023 map did indeed violate the VRA. It reasoned that the map was “an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians’ voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way.”
Alabama also appealed this decision to SCOTUS, and it was in the queue to be heard, as SCOTUSBlog wrote in the story linked above:
Alabama went to the Supreme Court, which delayed its consideration of the state’s appeals until after the justices issued their April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, in which it struck down Louisiana’s congressional map. On Friday, the state – which had asked the justices to expedite their consideration of those appeals – also sought to have the lower-court orders barring Alabama from using the 2023 map put on hold immediately because the justices are not scheduled to issue orders from their next private conference until Monday, May 18, just one day before the state’s primary election is currently scheduled to take place.
SCOTUS gave Alabama that emergency review, and on May 11, vacated the lower court's ruling, sending it back to them to provide redress based on the precedent established with Callais. The Northern District Court of Alabama did not like this and essentially defied SCOTUS in using the same precepts they did the first time in blocking Alabama's use of their 2023 maps.
Read More: New: Alabama Is Free to Redraw Its Maps After SCOTUS Vacates District Court Ruling
Another ridiculous canard critics such as this Atlantic writer like to use is the per curiam order was unsigned. According to the nation's highest court, the vast majority of the cases which are filed with SCOTUS are "disposed of summarily by unsigned orders." This is not some nefarious or casual plot by the justices. It's standard operating procedure. But these folks consistently use this language to make it appear as though it was rendered without thought or for fraudulent means. Sadly, the vast majority of the public does not bother to refute this deliberate attempt to embed this faulty supposition.
This Atlantic writer dives into full bore SCOTUS derangement with his issue with the justices use of Alito's language in the Callais decision to justify their favorable order. And how, exactly, is this a problem? It's also telling that he uses "judges" to described SCOTUS, rather than the proper term of "justices."
In it, the judges argued that the lower court had “failed to follow our instruction” in ordering the creation of the new district. This was a reference to the April decision in Louisiana v. Callais, in which Justice Samuel Alito announced that “race and politics are so intertwined” that there are almost no circumstances under which the Fifteenth Amendment’s prohibition on racial discrimination in voting actually applies.
Failure to follow instructions is exactly what the district court did. The lower court didn't even bother to review the pleadings in light of the new precedent. It appears the three-judge panel only paid attention to what the unwise Latina: Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote in her dissent to the first emergency petition.
Finally, Sotomayor noted, “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.”.
Alabama Map Fight Erupts Again As Federal Panel Defies SCOTUS Momentum
Garbage in, garbage out, as they say. SCOTUS affirmed that the majority of the highest court trumps a three-judge lower court panel every day of the week, and twice on Sunday. This is what sticks in their craw. That the majority of the justices used solid case law and precedent to render their decision, and all their hero Justice Sotomayor had was activist rantings that did not hold water.
The writer continued to attack language he failed to understand, then moved to attacking a state legislature's ability to dictate and apply election procedures and laws. These powers are written into many states' constitutions, Alabama being one of them. But this genius Serwer, who has no concept of the makeup of the state of Alabama and the strides the legislature has made to ensure free, fair, and equitable elections across the board, once again went back to the racist assumptions that any action by Alabama to redraw its district automatically suppresses Black voting power. Because that's what Southerners and evil Republicans do.
Now here was an example of exactly what Alito was talking about. “States are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests,” the justices wrote this week. If a Republican legislature decides that a redistricting plan to suppress the power of Black voters is “in their best interests,” they may proceed.
The writer then goes on a screed about the ruling being an inversion of the Civil Rights amendments (13, 15, 15), when it is anything but. If the redrawing of maps seeks to not discriminate based on race, and all voters of any race do not consistently vote Democrat or Republican, then the argument that all Black voters are being disenfranchised is moot.
The absurdities continue. According to the majority, anyone alleging that a map is discriminatory must provide an alternative map that provides the same outcome: The plaintiff’s map “must meet all the State’s legitimate districting objectives’ ‘just as well’ as the State’s own map,” the opinion reads. In this case, that “legitimate” objective is the creation of safe Republican districts. So the burden is on the victims of intentional discrimination to make sure that the people discriminating against them get what they want anyway.
His entire essay is absurd, written from the lens of his ignorance and animus. But, this is par for the course with the legacy media and their ilk.
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