Court rules in favor of Black Alabama voters in unexpected defense of Voting Rights Act
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a surprising 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in a congressional redistricting case from Alabama, with two conservative justices joining liberals in rejecting a Republican-led effort to weaken a landmark voting rights law.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh aligned with the court's liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling that found a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in an Alabama congressional map with one majority Black seat out of seven districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black. The state now will have to draw a new map for next year's elections.
The decision was keenly anticipated for its potential effect on control of the closely divided U.S. House of Representatives. Because of the ruling, new maps are likely in Alabama and Louisiana that could allow Democratic-leaning Black voters to elect their preferred candidates in two more congressional districts.
The outcome was unexpected in that the court had allowed the challenged Alabama map to be used for the 2022 elections, and in arguments last October the justices appeared willing to make it harder to challenge redistricting plans as racially discriminatory under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The chief justice himself suggested last year that he was open to changes in the way courts weigh discrimination claims under the part of the law known as section 2. But on Thursday, Roberts wrote that the court was declining "to recast our section 2 case law as Alabama requests."
Roberts also was part of conservative high-court majorities in earlier cases that made it harder for racial minorities to use the Voting Rights Act in ideologically divided rulings in 2013 and 2021.
The other four conservative justices dissented Thursday. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the decision forces "Alabama to intentionally redraw its longstanding congressional districts so that black voters can control a number of seats roughly proportional to the black share of the State's population. Section 2 demands no such thing, and, if it did, the Constitution would not permit it."
The Biden administration sided with the Black voters in Alabama.
Attorney General Merrick Garland applauded the ruling: "Today's decision rejects efforts to further erode fundamental voting rights protections, and preserves the principle that in the United States, all eligible voters must be able to exercise their constitutional right to vote free from discrimination based on their race."
Evan Milligan, a Black voter and the lead plaintiff in the case, said the ruling was a victory for democracy and people of color.
"We are grateful that the Supreme Court upheld what we knew to be true: that everyone deserves to have their vote matter and their voice heard. Today is a win for democracy and freedom not just in Alabama but across the United States," Milligan said.
Alabama Republican Party Chairman John Wahl said in a statement that state lawmakers would comply with the ruling. "Regardless of our disagreement with the Court's decision, we are confident the Alabama Legislature will redraw district lines that ensure the people of Alabama are represented by members who share their beliefs, while following the requirements of applicable law," Wahl said.
But Steve Marshall, the state's Republican attorney general, said he expects to continue defending the challenged map in federal court, including at a full trial. "Although the majority's decision is disappointing, this case is not over," Marshall said in a statement.
Deuel Ross, a civil rights lawyer who argued the case at the Supreme Court, said the justices have validated the lower court's view in this case. A full trial "doesn't seem a good use of Alabama's time, resources or the money of the people to continue to litigate their case."
The case stems from challenges to Alabama's seven-district congressional map, which included one district in which Black voters form a large enough majority that they have the power to elect their preferred candidate. The challengers said that one district is not enough, pointing out that overall, Alabama's population is more than 25% Black.
A three-judge court, with two appointees of former President Donald Trump, had little trouble concluding that the plan likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the votes of Black Alabamians. The panel ordered a new map drawn.
But the state quickly appealed to the Supreme Court, where five conservative justices prevented the lower-court ruling from going forward. At the same time, the court decided to hear the Alabama case.
Louisiana's congressional map had separately been identified as probably discriminatory by a lower court. That map, too, remained in effect last year and now will have to be redrawn.
The National Redistricting Foundation said in a statement that its pending lawsuits over congressional districts in Georgia and Texas also could be affected.
Separately, the Supreme Court in the fall will hear South Carolina's appeal of a lower-court ruling that found Republican lawmakers stripped Black voters from a district to make it safer for a Republican candidate. That case also could lead to a redrawn map in South Carolina, where six U.S. House members are Republicans and one is a Democrat.
Partisan politics also underlies the Alabama case. Republicans who dominate elective office in Alabama have been resistant to creating a second district with a Democratic-leaning Black majority, or close to one, that could send another Democrat to Congress.
The judges found that Alabama concentrated Black voters in one district, while spreading them out among the others to make it much more difficult to elect more than one candidate of their choice.
Alabama's Black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district, the judges found.
Denying discrimination, Alabama argued that the lower court ruling would have forced it to sort voters by race and insisted it was taking a "race neutral" approach to redistricting.
At arguments in October, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson scoffed at the idea that race could not be part of the equation. Jackson, the court's first Black woman, said that constitutional amendments passed after the Civil War and the Voting Rights Act a century later were intended to do the same thing, make Black Americans "equal to white citizens."
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Associated Press writer Kim Chandler contributed to this report from Montgomery, Alabama.
Justices side with Jack Daniel's in dispute with makers of dog toy
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday gave whiskey maker Jack Daniel's reason to raise a glass, handing the company a new chance to win a trademark dispute with the makers of the Bad Spaniels dog toy.
In announcing the decision for a unanimous court, Justice Elena Kagan was in an unusually playful mood. At one point while reading a summary of the opinion in the courtroom Kagan held up the toy, which squeaks and mimics the whiskey's signature bottle.
Kagan said a lower court's reasoning was flawed when it ruled for the makers of the rubber chew toy. The court did not decide whether the toy's maker had violated trademark law but instead sent the case back for further review.
"This case is about dog toys and whiskey, two items seldom appearing in the same sentence," Kagan wrote in an opinion for the court. At another point, Kagan asked readers to "Recall what the bottle looks like (or better yet, retrieve a bottle from wherever you keep liquor; it's probably there)" before inserting a color picture of it.
Arizona-based VIP Products has been selling its Bad Spaniels toy since 2014. It's part of the company's Silly Squeakers line of chew toys that mimic liquor, beer, wine and soda bottles. They include Mountain Drool, which parodies Mountain Dew, and Heini Sniff'n, which parodies Heineken beer.
While Jack Daniel's bottles have the words "Old No. 7 brand" and "Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey," the toy proclaims: "The Old No. 2 on Your Tennessee Carpet." The original bottle notes it is 40% alcohol by volume. The parody features a dog's face and says it's "43% Poo by Vol." and "100% Smelly."
The packaging of the toy, which retails for around $20, notes in small font: "This product is not affiliated with Jack Daniel Distillery."
Jack Daniel's, based in Lynchburg, Tennessee, wasn't amused. Its lawyers argued that the toy misleads customers, profits "from Jack Daniel's hard-earned goodwill" and associates its "whiskey with excrement."
At the center of the case is the Lanham Act, the country's core federal trademark law. It prohibits using a trademark in a way "likely to cause confusion ... as to the origin, sponsorship, or approval of ... goods."
A lower court never got to the issue of consumer confusion, however, because it said the toy was an "expressive work" communicating a humorous message and therefore needed to be evaluated under a different test. Kagan said that was a mistake and that "the only question in this case going forward is whether the Bad Spaniels marks are likely to cause confusion."
Kagan also said a lower court erred in its analysis of Jack Daniel's claim against the toy company for linking "its whiskey to less savory substances."
The opinion was one of four the court issued Thursday, including a 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in Alabama in a congressional redistricting case. The case had been closely watched for its potential to weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The case is Jack Daniel's Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC, 22-148.
Court rules for nursing home patient's family, declines to limit civil rights lawsuits
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for the family of a nursing home resident with dementia that had sued over his care, declining to use the case to broadly limit the right to sue government workers.
The man's family went to court alleging that he was given drugs to keep him easier to manage in violation of his rights. The justices had been asked to use his case to limit the ability of people to use a federal law to sue for civil rights violations. That outcome could have left tens of millions of people participating in federal programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, without an avenue to go to court to enforce their rights.
The Supreme Court has previously said that a section of federal law — "Section 1983" — broadly gives people the right to sue state and local governments when their employees violate rights created by any federal statute.
The court by a 7-2 vote reiterated that Thursday, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing that Section 1983 "can presumptively be used to enforce unambiguously conferred federal individual rights." Both liberal and conservative justices joined her majority opinion while conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
The court had been asked to say that when Congress creates a federal spending program — giving states money to provide services such as Medicare and Medicaid — they shouldn't face lawsuits from individuals under Section 1983. The court rejected that invitation.
The specific case the justices heard involves the interaction of Section 1983 and the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act, a 1987 law that outlines requirements for nursing homes that accept federal Medicare and Medicaid funds. The court was being asked to answer whether a person can use Section 1983 to go to court with claims their rights under the nursing home act are violated. The answer is yes, the court said.
The Biden administration had argued to the high court that Congress did not intend to allow Section 1983 lawsuits when it enacted the nursing home legislation.
The case in front of the court involved Gorgi Talevski, who was a resident of Valparaiso Care and Rehabilitation, a government nursing home in Indiana. His family said the nursing home found it difficult to care for Talevski, and so gave him powerful drugs to restrain him, then involuntarily transferred him to another facility. The facility says Talevski repeatedly acted violently and in a sexually aggressive manner and that drugs were prescribed by doctors.
Talevski's family sued under Section 1983, saying his rights had been violated. A trial court dismissed the case, but a federal court of appeals said it could proceed. Talevski died in 2021.
The opinion was one of four the court issued Thursday, including a 5-4 ruling in favor of Black voters in Alabama in a congressional redistricting case. That case had been closely watched for its potential to weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act.
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