In my Slate piece and SCOTUSBlog preview of the Alabama redistricting case the Supreme Court hears Wednesday morning, I described the interesting position conservative Justices are put in by this case: it is not clear to me how the conservatives will view this case: through the lens of race or party, or whether they will reverse or uphold the 2-1 ruling in favor of the Alabama legislature.

So I was very interested in seeing what race warrior (and voting rights act and affirmative action opponent) Ed Blum had to say in his new WSJ oped on the case.  And surprisingly, he doesn’t really say what the Court should do. This is the closest he comes:

The real question to ask here is about the transformation of civil- and voting-rights laws from shields to protect individuals against racial discrimination into swords to further racial partisan empowerment. While it may be wrong to overpack districts with minorities, it is just as wrong to use them as tools to pick off political opponents. Congress, the courts, and both Republicans and Democrats share the blame for this state of affairs.

Here’s a way out: Redistricting must create districts that connect compact, contiguous neighborhoods and, in the process, ignore the racial results these districts may produce. Think of a process that uses elementary-school attendance zones as the building blocks to create election districts in cities like Mobile, Houston or Los Angeles. Those districts may not have the racial percentages sought by political parties, but candidates for office and elected representatives would likely be forced to find more middle ground on many issues than they do now.

Until the Supreme Court fixes the baffling jurisprudence it has created over the past 40 years regarding race and ethnicity, lower courts will be forced to grapple with this confusion. Perhaps the Alabama case would be a good place for the justices to start.

UPDATE: Roger Clegg’s contribution seems to want the Supreme Court to use this case as an occasion to declare that the Voting Rights Act cannot require the creation of majority-minority districts (which would of course render the act a nullity in the context of redistricting.)