Who counts as Black in voting maps? Some GOP state officials want that narrowed
"Who counts as Black?
The thorny question has quietly found its way before the U.S. Supreme Court again, ensnared in a major legal battle over the Voting Rights Act that could further gut the landmark law and make it harder to protect the political power of voters of color.
The battle is playing out over new maps of congressional voting districts created by Republican-led legislatures in Alabama and Louisiana after the 2020 census. The fate of the maps rests on how the Supreme Court rules first in the case out of Alabama — Merrill v. Milligan — which the high court heard this month and may set a precedent for lawsuits about Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
In both cases out of the Deep South states, lower courts have separately found that the maps were drawn in a way that likely dilutes Black voters' strength at the polls. That would violate the Voting Rights Act by giving a minority group, as spelled out in Section 2, "less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice."
GOP state officials have pushed back against the analyses that led to those findings, partly by questioning a definition of Blackness that, for close to two decades, has been the standard in cases focused on the voting power of Black people and no other racial or ethnic group whom the federal government classifies as a protected minority population."
Since a 2003 ruling by the Supreme Court, that definition of "Black" has included every person who identifies as Black on census forms — including people who check off the boxes for Black and any other racial or ethnic category such as white, Asian and Hispanic or Latino, which the federal government considers to be an ethnicity that can be of any race.
Republican state officials, however, have called for narrower definitions of Blackness that do not include people who also identify with another minority group.
Citing no evidence, GOP officials in Alabama argued in lower court filings that limiting the definition to people who mark just the "Black" box and do not identify as Latino for the census would be "most defensible."
And in the Louisiana case — Ardoin v. Robinson — officials have been arguing for the definition to only include people who check off either just the "Black" box or both "Black" and "White" and do not identify as Latino.
Before appealing their redistricting case to the Supreme Court, Alabama officials dropped their push to redefine Blackness.
But the state of Louisiana and its Republican secretary of state, Kyle Ardoin, have asked the country's highest court to weigh in with a final word on which definition should be used in Section 2 cases.
Lower courts have already found that even when using more limited definitions of "Black" as proposed by the Republican officials, the premise of the courts' analyses of the voting maps does not change.
Still, in one filing to the high court, Louisiana officials say using the more expansive definition of Blackness, which includes all people who identify themselves as Black, to analyze the state's new map of congressional districts is an "independent legal error warranting this Court's intervention."
A narrower definition of "Black" could end up allowing other redistricting plans to minimize Black voting strength.
How the Supreme Court decides the case over Alabama's congressional map, however, could have broader implications on the political power of all voters of color. Many voting rights advocates are watching to see if enough of the court's conservative majority adopts one of Alabama's more extreme arguments — that race cannot be taken into account when drawing voting districts unless there's evidence of intentional racial discrimination.
A ruling along those lines could make it virtually impossible to use Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to challenge voting maps in the future, turning how "Black" is defined in redistricting into a less urgent question.
Still, the challenges Republican state officials have already made on who counts as Black have raised uneasy questions about the complicated history of defining Blackness and the future of Black voting power in a country where growing numbers of people identify with more than one race."
"Who counts as Black?
The thorny question has quietly found its way before the U.S. Supreme Court again, ensnared in a major legal battle over the Voting Rights Act that could further gut the landmark law and make it harder to protect the political power of voters of color.
The battle is playing out over new maps of congressional voting districts created by Republican-led legislatures in Alabama and Louisiana after the 2020 census. The fate of the maps rests on how the Supreme Court rules first in the case out of Alabama — Merrill v. Milligan — which the high court heard this month and may set a precedent for lawsuits about Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
In both cases out of the Deep South states, lower courts have separately found that the maps were drawn in a way that likely dilutes Black voters' strength at the polls. That would violate the Voting Rights Act by giving a minority group, as spelled out in Section 2, "less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice."
GOP state officials have pushed back against the analyses that led to those findings, partly by questioning a definition of Blackness that, for close to two decades, has been the standard in cases focused on the voting power of Black people and no other racial or ethnic group whom the federal government classifies as a protected minority population."
Since a 2003 ruling by the Supreme Court, that definition of "Black" has included every person who identifies as Black on census forms — including people who check off the boxes for Black and any other racial or ethnic category such as white, Asian and Hispanic or Latino, which the federal government considers to be an ethnicity that can be of any race.
Republican state officials, however, have called for narrower definitions of Blackness that do not include people who also identify with another minority group.
Citing no evidence, GOP officials in Alabama argued in lower court filings that limiting the definition to people who mark just the "Black" box and do not identify as Latino for the census would be "most defensible."
And in the Louisiana case — Ardoin v. Robinson — officials have been arguing for the definition to only include people who check off either just the "Black" box or both "Black" and "White" and do not identify as Latino.
Before appealing their redistricting case to the Supreme Court, Alabama officials dropped their push to redefine Blackness.
But the state of Louisiana and its Republican secretary of state, Kyle Ardoin, have asked the country's highest court to weigh in with a final word on which definition should be used in Section 2 cases.
Lower courts have already found that even when using more limited definitions of "Black" as proposed by the Republican officials, the premise of the courts' analyses of the voting maps does not change.
Still, in one filing to the high court, Louisiana officials say using the more expansive definition of Blackness, which includes all people who identify themselves as Black, to analyze the state's new map of congressional districts is an "independent legal error warranting this Court's intervention."
A narrower definition of "Black" could end up allowing other redistricting plans to minimize Black voting strength.
How the Supreme Court decides the case over Alabama's congressional map, however, could have broader implications on the political power of all voters of color. Many voting rights advocates are watching to see if enough of the court's conservative majority adopts one of Alabama's more extreme arguments — that race cannot be taken into account when drawing voting districts unless there's evidence of intentional racial discrimination.
A ruling along those lines could make it virtually impossible to use Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to challenge voting maps in the future, turning how "Black" is defined in redistricting into a less urgent question.
Still, the challenges Republican state officials have already made on who counts as Black have raised uneasy questions about the complicated history of defining Blackness and the future of Black voting power in a country where growing numbers of people identify with more than one race."
