Kagan joined the court's other two liberals in her dissenting opinion.
, could remain in place for the foreseeable future until the full case is heard by the high court. This halts a previous decision from a lower federal court that stated the redrawn map could not be used because it likely violated the Voting Rights Act.
This violation came, the lower court said, because the Republican map gives Black voters political control in only a single district. This means that they would be able to select just 14 percent of the state's congressional delegation, despite Alabama having the fifth-highest percentage of Black residents in the country.'s decision now means that the GOP-led map will be used for the state's primaries.
In her dissenting opinion, Kagan blasted her conservative colleagues for voting in the GOP map's favor, stating that it would hurt enfranchisement efforts in Alabama—a state the most recent census estimates is 27 percent Black.just because the court's order came down in the first month of an election year," Kagan wrote in her dissent. This Court is wrong to stay that decision based on a hastily made and wholly unexplained prejudgment that it is ready to change the law.
"That decision does a disservice to our own appellate processes, which serve both to constrain and to legitimate the Court's authority," Kagan continued. It does a disservice to the District Court, which meticulously applied this Court's longstanding voting-rights precedent. And most of all, it does a disservice to Black Alabamians who under that precedent have had their electoral power diminished—in violation of a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy.