COBB COUNTY, GA — In a win for Black and Latino voters, the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia blocked the Cobb County School Board from using its racially gerrymandered map in an upcoming election because it violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution.

This story was originally published by FOX 5 Atlanta.

"We are concerned by the large number of voters whose US Representatives and potentially polling locations will change in such a quick timeframe," said Rashidah Hasan, representing the League of Women Voters of Georgia.

JACKSON, Miss. — The League of Women Voters of the US, the League of Women Voters of Mississippi, the Mississippi Center for Justice, One Voice, Mississippi Votes, Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, Black Voters Matter, Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, Reaching and Educating for Community Hope (RECH) Foundation, Strong Arms of Mississippi, Mississippi Prison Reform Coalition, People’s Advocacy Institute, and the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, filed an amicus brief late Wednesday in Hopkins v. Watkins, urging the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to declare Mississippi’s lifetime felony disenfranchisement law — Section 241 — cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution. The groups are represented by pro bono attorneys Matthew Sloan, Lauren Aguiar, Shaud Tavakoli, Daniel Bleiberg, Andrew Karp, and Kathleen Shelton. 

In an unexpected decision last June, Allen v. Milligan, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and ruled that Alabama’s 2021 congressional map illegally diluted the voting power of Black Alabamians. Following SCOTUS’s ruling, Alabama defied the court’s order in an attempt to continue disempowering Black residents.