A federal law banning racial discrimination in elections was broken, according to the US Supreme Court, by an electoral map used in Alabama.
The 5-4 decision upheld a lower court's finding that black Alabamians' voting power had been diminished by the Republican-drawn state electoral map.
The map, which depicts the seven congressional districts for the state, was approved in 2021.
A crucial component of the influential 1965 Voting Rights Act is preserved by the decision.
In their opinion on Thursday, the court's three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, sided with two of its six conservative justices, John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh.
Due to the decision, Alabama will have to redistribute its congressional districts so that a second district with a majority of Black people is included.
The current congressional map only has one district with a majority of black people, despite the fact that about 27% of the state's population of voting age is black.
Currently, the only district in the state that is majority black is a Democratic one. Republicans are in charge of the other six.
