This is such a distressing decision from a court determined to eviscerate the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which constituted a giant step toward democratic governance -- where no one was denied voting rights and representation because of race (consistent with the 15th Amendment) -- in the United States.
In an unsigned 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court overruled a 3-judge panel of the District Court, which had ruled that Alabama's redistricting plan constituted illegal racial gerrymandering, thus violating the Voting Rights Act.
Justice Roberts in dissent with Justice Kagan (see below) that the lower court's ruling was consistent with current Supreme Court precedent; thus, "the District Court properly applied existing law in an extensive opinion with no apparent errors for our correction."
Justice Kagan, in a separate dissent (joined by Justices Breyer and Sotomayor), stated: "The District Court (including two judges from the State) found that the plan unlawfully diluted the votes of the State’s Black population, and ordered the State to devise a new plan for the 2022 elections."
While Justice Kavanaugh (joined by Justice Alito) issued a concurring opinion to the majority's unsigned ruling, he did not dispute Roberts and Kagan's judgement regarding precedent.
The subtext: the current Republican supermajority on the court (including Roberts) are poised to overturn previous Supreme Court rulings and federal law, though this will not happen until later this term or next. (Kavanaugh's concurrence denies any signaling by the court. Time will tell how credible his grumbling is.)
This majority isn't willing to wait. Five Republican justices are in a rush to overturn decades-long precedent without even a full briefing and presentation of arguments. (Roberts can wait; he'll choose whether or not to join his colleagues later. Past behavior -- and an aggressive aversion to the 1965 act -- suggests that he will be on board eventually.) These justices have made up their minds. Their ruling, when it comes, will almost certainly harmonize with the agenda of the Alabama (and national) Republican Party.
Justice Kagan's dissent concluded:
Today’s decision is one more in a disconcertingly long line of cases in which this Court uses its shadow docket to signal or make changes in the law, without anything approaching full briefing and argument. Here, the District Court applied established legal principles to an extensive evidentiary record. Its reasoning was careful—indeed, exhaustive—and justified in every respect. To reverse that decision requires upsetting the way Section 2 plaintiffs have for decades—and in line with our caselaw—proved vote-dilution claims. That is a serious matter, which cannot properly occur without thorough consideration. Yet today the Court skips that step, staying the District Court’s order based on the untested and unexplained view that the law needs to change. That decision does a disservice to our own appellate processes, which serve both to constrain and to legitimate the Court’s authority. It does a disservice to the District Court, which meticulously applied this Court’s longstanding voting-rights precedent. And most of all, it does a disservice to Black Alabamians who under that precedent have had their electoral power diminished—in violation of a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy.