Big Update After Supreme Court’s 5–4 Unexpected Decision | CLIP | Facts Matter

[Music] [Music] 5 days ago in a truly surprising turn of events a federal judge over in the state of Georgia he ordered the creation of several new congressional districts that are majority black specifically judge Steve Jones Who was appointed to the bench by Barack Obama he ordered the Georgia State Legislature to throw out the current maps and to instead redraw the maps so that a total of eight electoral districts which are currently majority white can be flipped to instead be majority black and of course since this is the year 2023 it's all being done under the broad Banner of anti-racism here was exactly what the judge wrote as a part of the justification for his order quote Georgia has made great strides since 1965 towards equality and voting however the evidence before this court shows that Georgia has has not reached the point where the political process has equal openness and equal opportunity for everyone the electoral districts now in place do not reflect the fact that the growth of the state's non-white population has outpaced the growth rate of the white population and as such he ordered that the current maps must be redrawn with eight new majority black districts to be created and according to this order the state legislature has to do this in time for the upcoming 2024 election now if you're listening to this and thinking to yourself hold on a minute this sounds overtly racist aren't all American voters supposed to be treated equally regardless of their skin color and the answer since June of this year is surprisingly no the Supreme Court has actually made it such that states essentially need to do it this way as unbelievable as that sounds however in terms of how we got to this point that requires a little bit of explanation I believe that most people are aware that in this country we have something known as the Voting Rights Act it was passed back in the year 1965 and here is a plain English summary of section number two of that particular law quote section two of the Voting Rights Act prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race color or membership in a large language minority group so that is broadly what section two of the Voting Rights Act passed back in 1965 says that you can't discriminate based on color or based on race okay so then you fast forward to the modern day and over in the state of Alabama here's what the electoral map looked like you can see it up on screen for yourself and in regards to that map District number s is the only majority minority District meaning that only in District number seven did nonwhite minorities represent the majority of the voters in the other six districts white people were the majority now over in the state of Alabama this General configuration has been the same since 1993 with only one majority minority District however in 2020 the results of the US sensus revealed the fact that the racial profile of the state had actually changed in Alabama the US Census showed that that the proportion of white residents fell by 4% going from 68% 10 years ago to 64% today while at the same time Alabama's black population increased by almost the same amount by about 3.8% over that same time period And so as a result of that census in 2021 the Alabama Republican Le State Legislature they modified the existing districts in order to account for the shift in demographics however the new map just like the maps before it still had only one District that was majority minority which was again District Number 7 the other districts were still majority white this situation then led to several lawsuits being filed against the state arguing that the state legislature had actually violated section two of the Voting Rights Act by not creating a second majority minority District their argument essentially was that since 26% of Alabama's overall voting age population was black then around a quarter of the districts should be majority black as well they were accusing the state of drawing up maps which essentially diluted the voting power of black Americans and in terms of articulating the argument Miss Elizabeth prer who is the current solicitor general of the United States and she was representing the Biden Administration in this particular case here is how she presented the argument quote voting in Alabama is intensely racially polarized about as Stark as anywhere in the country the history and effects of racial discrimination in the state are severe black voters are significantly underrepresented on the flip side however the state of Alabama they defended their Maps making the argument that they are not required to redraw the districts just to assure that black voters control a certain number of seats in the state delegation and after several years of legal back and forth the case finally wound up in front of the US Supreme Court who ultimately in June of this year ruled against the state of Alabama the decision was 5-4 split with John Roberts Sonia Sodom Alina Kagan katangi Brown Jackson and BR Kavanaugh all voting in favor of creating these electoral districts based on race and in the majority opinion which free reference was written by Chief Justice John Roberts he acknowledged that this type of forced redistricting might lead to the bulcan isation of our country but he wrote that it still needs to be done quote our opinion does not diminish or disregard these concerns it simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here however Alabama's position runs headlong into our president a district is not equally open in other words when minority voters face unlike their majority peers block voting along racial lines arising against the backdrop of substantial racial discrimination within the state that renders a minority vote unequal to a vote by a non-minority voter meaning that as a practical matter the Supreme Court they rued that for one congressional districts must be racially drawn and that secondly it essentially codified into law the idea that black Americans are a distinct monolithic voting block that have interests that are distinct from other voting Americans regardless of what you think of that that notion whether you think it's right or wrong that is now the law of the land and once the Supreme Court made this decision back in June of this year it opened the floodgates for other similar lawsuits across the whole country and indeed since last June similar legal challenges have been filed over in the state of Arkansas Kentucky in Louisiana New Mexico South Carolina Tennessee Texas Florida as well as Utah and all this brings us right back to the case over in Georgia what happened there was that a lawsuit was brought forth by an organization called the alpha alpha fraternity which is a nonprofit for black Americans which at least according to their website describes themselves as a quote organization strengthening the Brotherhood and standing for social justice and this organization they filed a lawsuit against the Georgia Secretary of State accusing the state of violating the Voting Rights Act as interpreted by the US Supreme Court and after about a week-long trial judge Jones who was the judge in the case after he conducted what he called a quote thorough and sifting review of The Evidence evidence in this case he went ahead and he ruled for the plaintiffs directing the state legislature to create quote one new black majority congressional district along with two new black majority districts in the Georgia Senate and five new black majority districts in the Georgia House of Representatives he then further added that quote if the legislature fails to act he would carry out the map Drawn process himself however it's not clear whether it'll come to that given the fact that just hours after this order came down from Judge Jones the Georgia Governor he called for a special legislative session to meet in November in order for them to work on the new maps for the upcoming election now it is worth mentioning though that this decision might be appealed and if it is the appeals court might put the judge's order on hold meaning that the current maps might be used for the upcoming 2024 election however that hold will likely be temporary given the fact that the Supreme Court ruling from June appears to be on the side of Judge Jones and so even if the appeals court puts a hold on the order very likely these eight major black congressional districts will be created eventually