WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday told a lower court to take another look at claims alleging that Republican-drawn congressional districts in Arkansas tried to minimize the influence of black voters.
The justices rejected a May 2023 ruling by a panel of three federal judges that left the state’s congressional district map unchanged. All four districts are in Republican hands.
The Supreme Court said the lower court should reconsider the case in light of the justices’ ruling last month in a similar South Carolina case that left Republican-drawn districts in place.
The lower court had concluded that the plaintiffs, black voters and politicians, had failed to “make a plausible inference” that race was the predominant consideration when the new map was drawn.
The appeal to the Supreme Court was stalled for months while the justices decided the South Carolina case. The justices in that case upheld the Republican-drawn map on May 23, saying there was not enough evidence to show it was drawn based on racial rather than partisan considerations.
Prosecutors in Arkansas said the map drawn in 2021 split a single community of 140,000 Black people located in the 2nd Congressional District around Little Rock into three different districts. This diluted the black vote, making it even harder for black people to vote for the candidates of their choice, they said.
Arkansas is heavily Republican, but Little Rock is a Democratic stronghold. Black people tend to vote for Democrats.
The challengers filed claims under both the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act.
State officials said “fairly minor changes” were made after the 2020 census to divide the state’s four congressional districts so that each had roughly the same population.
The plaintiffs, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, said in court filings, “do not allege any direct evidence of a racial motive.”
A separate case in which civil rights groups are challenging the same map will go to trial next year.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
