The U.S. Supreme Court last week reversed a federal three-judge panel in Alabama that upheld the state’s legislative district map against a racial gerrymandering challenge. Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama concerned whether the state could purposefully overpopulate districts with African-American voters – necessarily reducing their voting power elsewhere – under the auspices of compliance with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act or maintaining racial equality in other districts. The Court rejected both theories and remanded the case for a district-by-district analysis of racial gerrymandering that will almost certainly “unpack” African Americans more evenly across the legislative map.

Alabama Legislative Black Caucus comes only a month after oral arguments in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission confronted the very real possibility that Arizona’s practice of redistricting by third party commission is unconstitutional. If so, the Legislature may soon regain the power to draw the state’s electoral map that it lost in 2000 and may do so uninhibited by Department of Justice preclearance requirements the Court struck down in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision.

Regardless of who draws Arizona’s next electoral map, Alabama Legislative Black Caucus provides another litigation tool for its opponents, particularly if the new map packs, combines or divides the state’s existing majority-minority districts. The decision means the new map’s drafters will not be as free to draw race-conscious districts under a Voting Rights Act compliance rationale.