The Supreme Court handed down two surprising, positive rulings Thursday deciding on voting rights and federal government powers, demonstrating a restraint that has been rare since the conservative majority was cemented with justices appointed by Donald Trump.
In the first, a congressional redistricting case from Alabama, the court reversed a decade’s worth of Voting Rights Act erosion. It ruled the state will have to redraw its congressional map to create a second district where Black voters are a majority instead of cramming them all into one. In the second case, the court ruled to preserve the rights of people participating in social welfare programs that receive federal funds.
These decisions show a remarkably different majority than the one which swept away abortion rights a year ago in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ruling. They add to a pattern of surprising restraint developing in the court, including the decision not to strike down an assault weapons ban in Illinois using the emergency, or “shadow,” docket. This is the same court that used the shadow docket in the last few years to allow Texas to implement its vigilante-enforced abortion ban months before Dobbs, to weaken the Clean Water Act, and to strike down countless Biden administration rules.