The Supreme Court on Monday evening overturned a New York state court ruling that found that the Staten Island-based district of Republican US House Rep. Nicole Malliotakis discriminated against Black and Latino voters and needed to be redrawn. The Supreme Court’s intervention preserves a GOP-led seat that would have been likely to shift to Democrats this November.

The court’s ruling sets a disturbing precedent for voting rights in several ways. Federal courts are supposed to defer to state courts on matters of state law. And the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that courts should not change election laws in the middle of an election season, and in this instance the filing deadline for candidates in New York has already passed.

Alito is essentially saying that districts drawn under the Voting Rights Act or other federal and state laws to remedy centuries of racial........

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