A court caught Republicans discriminating against Black voters – here’s how

It has been called a textbook example of discrimination against Black voters in the US. And a ruling on it from the supreme court is expected any day.

It isn’t the kind of the explicit voting discrimination, like poll taxes and literacy tests, that kept voters from the polls in the south during the Jim Crow era. Instead, it is more subtle.

Let us walk you through the case with our visual explainer.

The case focuses on Alabama, where the Republican-controlled legislature, like politicians in states across the US, recently completed the once-a-decade process of redrawing the boundaries of congressional maps. If partisan politicians exert too much control over the redistricting process, they can effectively engineer their own victories, or blunt the advantages of the other side, by allocating voters of particular political persuasions and backgrounds to particular districts.

Under the new districts, Black people make up 25% of the state’s population, but comprise a majority in just one of the state’s seven districts.