Activists are returning to court to fight Alabama’s redrawn congressional districts, alleging that state Republicans failed to follow federal court orders to create a district that is fair to black voters after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upheld those orders in June.
Plaintiffs in the high-profile redistricting case filed a written objection on Friday to oppose Alabama’s new redistricting plan, saying that GOP officials and lawmakers have flouted a judicial mandate to create a second majority-black House district or “something quite close to it.” They also allege that the current map is discriminatory to black voters in Alabama.
Last year, a special three-judge panel blocked use of the state’s existing districts and said any new congressional map should include two districts where “black voters either comprise a voting-age majority” or something close to that. That panel’s decision was appealed by the state but upheld in June in a surprise ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The high court ruled that having only one black majority district out of seven in Alabama likely violated voting rights laws. More than 25 percent of Alabama’s population is black, according to Census data, while most black voters across the country and the state have supported Democrats.
They also contended that Alabama state lawmakers were “focused on pleasing national leaders whose objective is to maintain the Republican Party’s slim majority in the U.S. House.” The new 2nd Congressional District of Alabama, they added, “does not provide black voters a realistic opportunity to elect their preferred candidate in any but the most extreme situations.”
Alabama officials, in contrast, have maintained that their new plan complies with the Voting Rights Act, and state leaders are wagering that the panel will accept their proposal or that the state will prevail in a second round of appeals to the Supreme Court. Republicans say that the map meets the court’s directive and draws compact districts that comply with redistricting guidelines.
The state must file its defense of the map by Aug. 4, according to the court. The three judges have scheduled an Aug. 14 hearing in the case as the fight over the map shifts back to federal court.
Former Democrat U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, head of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said in a statement that Alabama’s new map is a “brazen defiance” of the courts. Previously, Attorney General Merrick Garland hailed the Supreme Court’s decision in June, saying that it “rejects efforts to further erode fundamental voting rights protections.”
5-4 Decision
In a 5–4 ruling, the Supreme Court in mid-June ruled that the state’s congressional district likely violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Republican-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts joined the three Democrat-appointed justices in rendering the majority opinion, while Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a lengthy dissent.It came months after the three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state’s 2021 congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act. On June 8, the Supreme Court’s majority concurred with the appeals court decision.
In a majority opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, the court disagreed with Alabama’s position on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Justice Roberts made note that some parts of Section 2 “may impermissibly elevate race in the allocation of political power within the States.”
“We are content to reject Alabama’s invitation to change existing law,” the chief justice wrote. “We find Alabama’s new approach to [Section] 2 compelling neither in theory nor in practice. We accordingly decline to recast our [Section] 2 case law as Alabama requests.”
Meanwhile, Justice Thomas argued in a dissent that “the question presented is whether [Section] 2 of the Act, as amended, requires the State of Alabama to intentionally redraw its longstanding congressional districts so that black voters can control a number of seats roughly proportional to the black share of the State’s population.”
“Section 2 demands no such thing, and, if it did, the Constitution would not permit it,” Justice Thomas continued. “At the outset, I would resolve these cases in a way that would not require the Federal Judiciary to decide the correct racial apportionment of Alabama’s congressional seats,” he said.
After the ruling was handed down, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, called for a special legislative session to draw a new congressional map.
The Supreme Court issued a similar ruling that targeted Louisiana’s Republican-drawn congressional map, meaning that the state may have another majority-black district. The case had been placed on hold ahead of the Alabama ruling.
