In a surprise ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama's congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act, ordering the state to create a second district with a large Black population.

The case had been closely watched for its potential to weaken the Voting Rights Act.

Chief Justice John Roberts and conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the high court's three liberal justices to uphold a lower court's ruling which found that the state's congressional map violated the landmark voting rights law. The state's congressional map had one majority Black seat out of seven congressional districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black.

Writing for the majority, Roberts said that the landmark voting rights bill "may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power within the states."

"Our opinion today does not diminish or disregard these concerns," he added. "It simply holds that a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record before us do not bear them out here."

Roberts was part of conservative high-court majorities in earlier cases that made it harder for racial minorities to use the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in ideologically divided rulings in 2013 and 2021.

In a statement, President Joe Biden said that the ruling "confirms the basic principle that voting practices should not discriminate on account of race," but pledged that the fight to advance voting rights was far from over.

"Today the Court ruled that Alabama likely violated the Voting Rights Act by drawing a map that diluted Black votes in the state," Biden said. "The right to vote and have that vote counted is sacred and fundamental — it is the right from which all of our other rights spring. Key to that right is ensuring that voters pick their elected officials — not the other way around."

"Our work is not done," he later added. "Vice President [Kamala] Harris and I will continue to fight to pass both the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act, and the Freedom to Vote Act to ensure fair Congressional maps and that all Americans have their voices heard."

The court had allowed the challenged map to be used for the 2022 midterm elections. At arguments in October, the justices appeared willing to make it harder to use the voting rights law to challenge redistricting plans as racially discriminatory.

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.”

Jackson and the other two liberals on the court, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, said a decision like the one issued Thursday would result in many fewer districts drawn to give racial minorities the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice.

Advocates argued that the state's map diluted the power of Black voters. Thursday's ruling may inspire similar challenges in other states. Louisiana’s congressional map, also identified as probably discriminatory by a lower court, was also allowed to remain in effect by the Supreme Court for last year's midterms.

In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland cheered the ruling, calling it instrumental in upholding the right to vote.

“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," Garland, himself a Supreme Court nominee in 2016, said. "The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow."

"Over the past two years, the Justice Department has rededicated its resources to enforcing federal voting rights protections," Garland continued. "We will continue to use every authority we have left to defend voting rights. But that is not enough. We urge Congress to act to provide the Department with important authorities it needs to protect the voting rights of every American.”

Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell, currently the state's only Democratic member of the congressional delegation, called the ruling a "historic victory."

"Amazing!!" she wrote on Twitter. "Historic victory for the Voting Rights Act, our Democracy and Alabama Black Voters!!! The arch of the moral universe is long but it bends."

In a dissent, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas lamented that the decision mandates "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."

Thomas argued that Section 2 of the VRA, which prohibits discrimination based on race in voting practices and procedures "demands no such thing, and, if it did, the Constitution would not permit it."

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.

The judges found that Alabama concentrated Black voters in one district, while spreading them out among the others to make it impossible for them to elect a candidate of their choice.

But the state quickly appealed to the Supreme Court, where five conservative justices prevented the lower-court ruling from going forward. They allowed last year’s congressional elections to proceed under the map that the lower court had said is probably illegal.