On Monday, the Supreme Court put back into effect Alabama’s proposed district maps for the 2022 congressional election cycle — even though two district courts had thrown them out on the grounds that they diluted Black votes in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The 5-4 ruling came with no majority opinion. Rather, the court issued unsigned and unexplained “stays” of the district court decisions, while agreeing to hear Alabama’s appeal of those rulings on their merits during its next term (which starts in October).

The four dissenters — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — all agreed that the court should take up the merits of Alabama’s appeals. But they vehemently disagreed with the majority’s decision that in the interregnum, the unlawful maps should immediately go back into effect by dint of an unexplained and unsigned emergency order.

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