NAACP urges athletes to boycott southern US universities over voting rights

Key points

• The Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has called on Black athletes and fans to boycott public universities in the United States’ South, in opposition to redistricting efforts that dilute Black voting power.
• The so-called “Out of Bounds” campaign, launched on Tuesday, calls on Black athletes, their families, alumni and fans to “withhold athletic and financial support” from major public universities in states that “have moved to limit, weaken or erase Black voting representation”.
• Those include Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and South Carolina, all southern states that have redistricted or sought to redistrict in the wake of a US Supreme Court ruling gutting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in April.
• Voting rights advocates have said the ruling makes it more difficult to challenge congressional district maps that appear designed to weaken the voting power of Black and minority groups.
• Black voters have historically...