WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday told a lower court to take a fresh look at claims alleging that Republican-drawn congressional districts in Arkansas sought to minimize the influence of Black voters.
The justices threw out a May 2023 ruling by a panel of three federal judges that left in place the state's congressional district map. All four districts are held by Republicans.
The Supreme Court said the lower court should review the case again in light of the justices' ruling last month in a similar case from South Carolina in which Republican-drawn districts were left in place.
The lower court had concluded that the plaintiffs, Black voters and politicians, had failed to "create a plausible inference" that race was the predominant consideration when the new map was drawn.
The appeal at the Supreme Court was on hold for months, while the justices decided the South Carolina case. The justices on May 23 upheld the Republican-drawn map in that case, saying there was not enough evidence to show that it was drawn based on racial as opposed to partisan considerations.
The plaintiffs in Arkansas said that the map drawn in 2021 split a single community of 140,000 Black people that had been in the 2nd Congressional District centered on Little Rock into three different districts. This diluted the Black vote, making it even more difficult for Black people to vote for the candidates of their choosing, they said.
Arkansas is heavily Republican, but Little Rock is a Democratic stronghold. Black people tend to vote for Democrats.
The challengers brought claims both under the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.
State officials said that "fairly minor changes" were made after the 2020 census in order to divide up the four congressional districts in the state so that they each roughly had the same population.
The plaintiffs, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in court papers, "don’t allege any sort of direct evidence of a racial motive."
A separate case in which civil rights groups are challenging the same map is due to go to trial next year.
