n a 5-4 decision, the Court overruled a panel of three Federal judges which threw out a voting map drawn by Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature last November. That map would have left Alabama, a state with a voting population about 27 percent Black, with only one majority-Black Congressional district out of seven total. All of the remaining districts would have been mostly-white and favored conservatives.

The lower court ruled that Alabama’s map should have included a second majority-Black district and would have forced the state legislature to redraw the map. But the Supreme Court’s majority, which notably was joined by Clarence Thomas, the Court’s lone Black justice, ruled that the lower court’s ruling was improper because it had made the decision too close to Alabama’s next elections–a primary not scheduled until May and a general election slated for November.

In a dissent joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the majority’s reasoning was pretty much nonsense.

She added that the lower court had acted well before the next primary election, in late May, and the general election, in November.