Supreme Court's Alabama redistricting decision could encourage more chaos, experts warn

The U.S. Supreme Court Kent Nishimura/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Kent Nishimura/Getty Images The Supreme Court was in the news Wednesday after delivering a second blow to the Voting Rights Act in just over a month. The latest ruling , issued late Tuesday, cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional redistricting map that favors Republicans by eliminating one of the two existing districts where voters had elected a Black Democrat to Congress. In late April, the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority all but gutted what remained of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. The ruling set off a mad scramble, particularly in some Southern states, to undo previous redistricting maps in an effort to gain greater partisan advantage and in the process to eliminate districts where Black voters had a fair chance of electing their candidate of choice. Leading the pack was Alabama, a state with its own distinct history of racial discrimination. Indeed, just three years ago the Supreme Court required the state to create a second district where African American voters could prevail. On Tuesday night, however, the court effectively reversed its three-year-old ruling. In doing so, it also chastised the three-judge federal court in charge of the case for failing to follow the high court's orders. …