Democratic leadership address the Supreme Court rejection of Alabama’s congressional redistricting
On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Alabama must redraw the state’s congressional map to allow an additional Black majority district to account for the fact that the state is 27% Black. The Alabama House Democratic Caucus and the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus both applauded the ruling. Alabama House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels (D-Huntsville) said, “During a severely short and limited map-drawing process, our Caucus spoke at length about our view of the law and provided ways the state could craft at least two districts that reflect fair political opportunities for African American voters.” “We are therefore pleased that the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the unanimous district court, which found the Alabama maps were discriminatory,” Daniels continued. “We stand ready to participate meaningfully with our colleagues to create a new map that fully complies with the law.” Rep. Terri Sewell wrote on Twitter, “Wow!!! The Supreme Court just upheld Section 2 of Voting Rights Act of 1965 and protected the voices of Black and minority voters. This is a historic victory not only for Black voters in Alabama, but for Democracy itself.” In a press release, Sewell said, “This is a historic victory, not only for Black voters in Alabama, but for Democracy itself. With this decision, the Supreme Court is saying loudly and clearly that the voices of minority voters matter and that fair representation must be upheld. I know that John Lewis and the Foot Soldiers of the Voting Rights Movement are smiling as they look down on us. Today, their sacrifice was rewarded. Our work is not over. We must continue the fight for fair representation by passing the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the full protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” State Senator Merika Coleman (D-Birmingham) is the Chair of the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus. “From the beginning of this case, we have strongly denounced racial gerrymandering and will continue our efforts to ensure that districts are drawn equitably and fairly,” said Sen. Coleman. “I applaud Chief Justice (John) Roberts for preserving Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This is a major victory for Black voters in Alabama, as well as the entire nation.” State Representative Napoleon Bracy, Jr. (D-Prichard) is the Vice Chair of the Alabama Black Legislative Caucus. “In a resounding victory for fair representation, the Supreme Court’s unexpected decision stands as a powerful testament to the importance of upholding the Voting Rights Act,” Rep. Bracy said. “By prohibiting racial gerrymandering in Alabama, the Court reaffirms the principle that every citizen’s voice deserves to be heard, regardless of their race. This ruling sends a clear message that political power should not be diluted through discriminatory practices, ensuring that the spirit of democracy remains strong and inclusive in Alabama.” In 2021, the Alabama state legislature produced new congressional maps which closely paralleled the previous 2012 redistricting with just one Black majority district. In a narrow 5-4 decision, the majority of the Court sided with the plaintiffs and affirmed that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act requires the Alabama legislature to draw a second district where minority voters can elect a candidate of their choice. The decision will also have an impact across the South, as today’s decision clears the way for additional minority districts to be drawn in other states with challenged maps, like Georgia and Louisiana. “It is hard to imagine many more fundamental ‘prerequisites’ to voting than determining where to cast your ballot or who you are eligible to vote for,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. The 34-page decision in Milligan penned by Roberts recommits to the Voting Rights Act’s promise as the foundation for justice for all, not just some. Roberts was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Kentaji Brown Jackson, and Brett Kavanaugh. Jeff Loperfido is the Interim Chief Counsel for Voting Rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “This is a great day for democracy and for the voting rights of Black and Brown communities throughout the South who continue to be the targets of discriminatory laws that seek to silence their voices and stifle their growing political power,” said Loperfido. “The Court’s forceful repudiation of Alabama’s extreme and disingenuous ‘race-blind’ mapping theory is a testament to the important role the Voting Rights Act plays in rooting out discriminatory electoral practices.” The Legal Defense Fund (LDF), American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Alabama, Hogan Lovells LLP, and Wiggins, Childs, Pantazis, Fisher & Goldfarb brought the case in November 2021 on behalf of Evan Milligan, Khadidah Stone, Letetia Jackson, Shalela Dowdy, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP. It was argued before the Court on Oct. 4, 2022. The case goes back to the three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta that originally ruled against the State of Alabama. The Supreme Court had stayed its ruling last year at the request of Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, and then-Secretary of State John Merrill. The three-judge panel will decide whether to order the Legislature to redraw the districts following the orders of the Court or order the state to adopt a zoning map drawn by the courts. Two alternative maps were presented to the Court by the plaintiffs. The easiest thing would be for the three judges to order the state to accept one of those maps. Whatever happens, Alabama’s Congressional maps will look substantially different than they are today by the end of the year. This will likely impact hundreds of thousands of Alabama voters. The major party primaries for the congressional districts will be on March 6. To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email brandonmreporter@gmail.com.
Supreme Court to rule soon on Alabama Congressional Districts
Alabama’s Congressional Districts could be thrown into chaos in the coming weeks if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds a lower court decision in a case challenging the 2021 congressional redistricting by the Alabama Legislature. The Supreme Court decision in the case of Milligan versus Merrill will be announced in the next few weeks. This decision could have a wide-ranging impact on when states must draw minority-majority districts. The plaintiffs claim that since Blacks are over 27% of the population of Alabama, the Legislature should have drawn two majority-minority districts, not one (Alabama’s Seventh Congressional District). A federal three-judge panel ruled for the plaintiffs and ordered the Legislature to redraw the districts. The state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which voted 5 to 4 to stay the lower court decision until they hear and decide the case. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said that the Supreme Court granted the State’s motion, allowing the Alabama Congressional District map as drawn by the Legislature in November to stand for now. “I’m gratified that the Supreme Court has stepped in to halt the district court’s order, which would have resulted in a congressional map that would have unconstitutionally divided Alabamians based on race,” Marshall stated. “As we have explained throughout this litigation, Alabama’s 2021 plan is an ordinary plan that looks much like the plan approved by a federal court in 1992, the plan approved by a majority-Democratic legislature in 2001, and the plan approved by a majority-Republican legislature in 2011. “Plaintiffs demand a significant overhaul to the map to create a second majority-Black district, but their own experts showed that no such map could be drawn unless traditional race-neutral principles took a back seat to voters’ race,” Marshall explained. “Indeed, one expert used her algorithm to draw two million random versions of Alabama’s map based on race-neutral principles, and not a single one had two majority-black districts. That is why each of the plans proposed by Plaintiffs would split Mobile County for the first time ever, to join voters in Mobile with voters as far away as Phenix City, based on race, all while dividing long-recognized communities centered on the Gulf Coast’s unique economy and culture.” The lawsuit challenging the map was brought by Evan Milligan, Khadidah Stone, Letitia Jackson, Shalela Dowdy, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, who are represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the American Civil Liberties Union) of Alabama, Hogan Lovells LLP, and Wiggins, Childs, Pantazis, Fisher & Goldfarb. Civil Rights groups are concerned that the opinion could further narrow the Voting Rights Act, similar to the landmark decision in Shelby v. Holder, which found that the preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act was an arcane measure that had no relevance in the modern world. As a result of the landmark Shelby v. Holder decision, the 2021 redistricting was the first in the state of Alabama in decades that did not have to get preclearance from the U.S. Department of Justice. A victory for the state of Alabama could give state legislatures nationwide more flexibility in how they draw their districts. A strong for the plaintiffs could impact districts beyond Alabama and spark more lawsuits as the two political parties use the courts to gain advantage over the other. On November 2022, six Alabama congressional incumbents (5 Republicans and 1 Democrat) easily sailed to re-election with little drama in districts that look much like how their districts were drawn a decade ago. Alabama congressional Republicans held on to the open Fifth Congressional District. No Alabama congressional district has flipped parties since the Second Congressional District flipped from Democrat to Republican control in 2010. Then Montgomery City Councilwoman Martha Roby defeated incumbent Congressman Bobby Bright. That was also the last time that an Alabama Congressional incumbent lost re-election. The decision is due before the end of June. To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email brandonmreporter@gmail.com.
Black representation in Alabama tested before Supreme Court
The invisible line dividing two of Alabama’s congressional districts slices through Montgomery, near iconic sites from the civil rights movement as well as ones more personal to Evan Milligan. There’s the house where his grandfather loaded people into his station wagon and drove them to their jobs during the Montgomery Bus Boycott as Black residents spurned city buses to protest segregation. It’s the same home where his mother lived as a child, just yards from a whites-only park and zoo she was not allowed to enter. The spot downtown where Rosa Parks was arrested, igniting the boycott, sits on one side of the dividing line, while the church pastored by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the protests, sits on the other. The lines are at the center of a high-stakes redistricting case bearing Milligan’s name that will go before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, setting up a new test of the Voting Rights Act and the role of race in drawing congressional boundaries. At the center of the case is a challenge by various groups arguing that the state violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters when it failed to create a second district in which they make up a majority, or close to it. African Americans account for about 27% of the state’s population but are the majority in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts. “Our congressional map is not reflective of the population that lives in Alabama,” said Milligan, 41, one of several voters who joined interest groups in filing the lawsuit. The case the Supreme Court will take up Tuesday centers on whether congressional districts in Alabama were drawn to reduce the political influence of Black voters, but it’s also part of a much broader problem that undermines representative government in the U.S. Both major political parties have practiced gerrymandering — drawing congressional and state legislative boundaries to cement their hold on power — but Republicans have been in control of the process in far more states since after the 2010 elections. That has allowed them to win an outsized share of statehouse and U.S. House seats and means GOP policies — including on abortion restrictions — often don’t reflect the will of most voters. An Associated Press analysis from 2017 showed that Alabama had one of the most gerrymandered congressional maps in the country. Republicans dominate elected office in Alabama and are in charge of redistricting. They have been resistant to creating a second district with a Democratic-leaning Black majority that could send another Democrat to Congress. A three-judge panel that included two appointees of President Donald Trump ruled unanimously in January that the Alabama Legislature likely violated the Voting Rights Act with the map. “Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the panel said. The judges ordered state lawmakers to draw new lines for this year’s election and create a second district where Black voters either made up a majority or near majority of the population. But on a 5-4 vote in February, the Supreme Court sided with Alabama to allow this year’s congressional elections to take place without adding a second predominantly Black district. Two justices suggested it was too close to spring primaries to make a change. The lawsuit claims the Alabama congressional map dilutes the voting strength of Black residents by packing a large number of them into a single district — the 7th, where 55% of voters are Black — while fragmenting other communities. That includes the state’s Black Belt region and the city of Montgomery. The current districts leave the vast majority of Black voters with no realistic chance to elect their preferred congressional candidates anywhere outside the 7th district, the lawsuit contends. “This is just about getting Black voters, finally, in Alabama, the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice. It’s not necessarily guaranteeing that they will have their candidate elected,” said Deuel Ross, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is representing the plaintiffs. The groups contend that the state’s Black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district. Milligan, who is six generations removed from enslaved ancestors who lived in the Black Belt, ticked off the consequences for Black residents who are not able to have representation that aligns with their needs: addressing generational poverty, the lack of adequate internet service, Medicaid expansion and the desire for a broader array of health care services. “In choosing not to do that, you’re denying the people of the Black Belt the opportunity to elect an additional person that can really go to the mat on their interests,” said Ross, who is one of the attorneys who will argue the case in a challenge backed by the Biden administration. African Americans served in Alabama’s congressional delegation following the Civil War in the period known as Reconstruction. They did not return until 1993, a year after the courts ordered the state to reconfigure the 7th Congressional District into a majority-Black one, which has since been held by a succession of Black Democrats. That 1992 map remains the basis for the one in use today. “Under numerous court challenges, the courts have approved this basic plan. All we did is adjust it for population deviation,” said state Rep. Chris Pringle, a Republican and chairman of the legislative committee that drew the new lines. Alabama argued in court filings that the state’s Black population is too spread out to be able to create a second majority district without abandoning core redistricting principles such as keeping districts compact and keeping communities of interest together. Drawing such a district, the state argued, would require mapping acrobatics, such as connecting coastal areas in southwest Alabama to peanut farms in the east. In a statement to The Associated Press, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said the map is “based on race-neutral redistricting principles that were approved by a bipartisan group of legislators.” He said it looks similar to
