The Hill reported that the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the State of Alabama’s motion to hold the court-ordered redistricting process currently before the three-judge panel.
This means that one of the three maps prepared by court-appointed special master, Richard Allen, and his team will be the new congressional maps used moving forward. The special master filed the maps with the court on Monday.
Congressmen Barry Moore and Jerry Carl are now both in Carl’s First Congressional District, while Carl’s home county of Mobile will now be split into majority White and majority Black sections going into separate congressional districts – much like Jefferson County has been for decades.
The new Second Congressional District, the new “opportunity district,” will include the eastern half of the Black Belt, the northern portion of the Wiregrass, the City of Montgomery, a vast swath of rural Alabama stretching from the Georgia line to the Mississippi line south to include most of the City of Mobile. No incumbent presently lives in the new Second District, so it is likely to be an open seat.
The exact boundary lines will be selected by the three-judge panel in a hearing tentatively set for October 3 -just days ahead of major party qualifying for the 2024 elections.
The special master wrote in his court filing on Monday: “Pursuant to the Court’s September 5, 2023, preliminary injunction order and instructions, the Special Master is filing three proposed remedial plans for Alabama’s U.S. congressional map, attached to this Report and Recommendation as Exhibits 1-3. Per the Court’s instructions, each proposed plan remedies the likely violation of Section Two of the Voting Rights Act identified in the Court’s preliminary injunction order. Each proposed plan also complies with the U.S. Constitution and the Voting Rights Act; adheres to the one-person, one-vote requirement; and respects traditional redistricting principles, including compactness, contiguity, respect for political subdivisions, and maintenance of communities of interest. Per the Court’s instructions, this Report and Recommendation details the choices made to arrive at each proposed plan, the differences between and among the proposed plans, and why each plan remedies the likely vote dilution found by the Court.”
The three-judge panel had ruled that the map drawn by the State Legislature in a July special session both violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and defied the court’s order to draw a new map with two majority-minority districts “or something close to it.”
The three maps prepared by the special master vary between 48.7% Black voters and 51.1% Black voters. In addition to the directions given by the court, the special master made an effort to follow much the same lines as the Legislature’s July map. Most of the changes are to congressional districts one and two.
The newly drawn Second Congressional District will be an open seat and will likely be won by the Democratic Party nominee if general election voters behave much as they have in the previous elections.
The Alabama Attorney General’s Office is expected to continue its appeal, but Tuesday’s refusal to stay the hold on the redistricting is an indicator that the court, much like the three-judge panel earlier, is skeptical of the state’s chance to prevail. The court has already ruled against the state in June.
Even if the court were ultimately to rule in Alabama’s favor, that ruling would likely arrive too late to impact the 2024 election.
Candidate qualifying for the March 5 Republican and Democratic Party primaries will open next month.
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