Alabama lawmakers to begin work on new congressional map
Alabama legislators will hold their first meeting next week to determine what the state’s new congressional map should look like after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state’s existing plan unlawfully diluted the power of Black voters. The chairmen of the Permanent Legislative Committee on Reapportionment on Wednesday released a schedule for hearings and deadlines. A three-judge panel last week gave lawmakers until July 21 to adopt a new congressional map. The deadline comes after the U.S. Supreme Court last week affirmed the panel’s finding that Alabama likely violated the Voting Rights Act with a congressional map that had only one majority Black district out of seven in a state where more than one in four residents is Black. The state must now draw a new map where Black voters comprise a majority, or close to it, in a second district. The reapportionment committee set a June 27 public hearing, a July 7 deadline to submit plans to the committee, and another public hearing for July 13. Hearings can be watched online at the Alabama Legislature’s website. Lawyers for the state of Alabama told the three-judge panel last week that they were prepared for a special session beginning the week of July 17. The court would then review the plan enacted by lawmakers. The judges tentatively set an Aug. 14 hearing date to review the new map. Republished with the permission of The Associated Press.
Voting rights marcher Della Simpson Maynor recalls being clubbed, hearing fatal gunshot during pivotal day of protests
Della Simpson Maynor was just 14 when she marched for voting rights in her hometown of Marion, Alabama. Her most distinct memory of that evening is of the police attacking the demonstrators. She recalls one officer, on horseback, swinging at her head with a club. “I remember going up with my elbow, trying to protect my head,” she said, pointing to the place where the club cracked down on her arm. “They didn’t care who they hit — children, women. I remember a lady. She was pregnant.” VOTING RIGHTS ACT SERIES The Feb. 18, 1965, march ended with the shooting of a young activist and set in motion events that galvanized support for Congress passing the Voting Rights Act later that year. The group had gathered to walk from Zion Methodist Church to the nearby jail to protest the arrest of James Orange, a leader in the civil rights movement. There was a rumor that white people in the town planned to lynch Orange that night to send a message. Maynor had wiggled her way near the front of the line, but the group made it only a few hundred feet. “All of a sudden, there were police officers everywhere,” she said. “They just came out of the darkness.” She remembers seeing a minister kneeling to pray. “They told him to get up, unlawful assembly. You have to disperse. And, of course, he continued to pray. And that wasn’t good enough, so they hit him with that billy club,” she said. “I started to try to retreat, but it was too late because they had begun to rush us.” Maynor ran and crouched beside the church, where she was found and hit. She and others fled into Mack’s Café, a restaurant that was part of a Black business district — the businesses on the town square were for whites only. A police officer came in and ordered them to leave. Maynor then heard the sound of a gunshot. A local church deacon, Jimmie Lee Jackson, trying to protect his grandfather from police inside the cafe, was shot by a state trooper. He died eight days later. Jackson’s death became the catalyst for a march the next month in Selma, when the participants were attacked by police as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The day became known as “Bloody Sunday,” and images of the violence galvanized support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year. “It was after Jimmie’s death and all the attention that was brought to this area that they actually attempted to do something about the Voting Rights Act,” Maynor said. At the time, she thought the struggle was over because “we immediately started electing people of color to key positions in this town.” But while events in Alabama helped give birth to the Voting Rights Act, court cases originating in the state have led to its steady erosion over the years. A U.S. Supreme Court case arising from a suburban Alabama county ended the requirement for several states with a history of voting discrimination, mainly in the South, to get federal approval before changing election laws and procedures. This summer, the court is expected to rule on whether the Voting Rights Act will be reinforced or further eroded in another case out of Alabama. “I’ve seen a lot of change,” said Maynor, now 74. “But I’ve seen a lot of things exactly remain the same because the thinking hasn’t changed.” While circumstances are vastly different nearly 60 years after the Voting Rights Act became law, Maynor sees echoes of the past. As a child, she attended segregated schools, waiting in the morning to catch an old bus while white children, riding a new one, would ride past her shouting racial slurs. Today, white politicians are trying to put boundaries on how race and the civil rights era are taught in schools. The vast majority of people “that hold power and make the biggest decisions” in Alabama are white, she said. “There’s a struggle that’s always had to be fought,” Maynor said. “You always hope the things you’ve done will make a difference in the long run, but to see where we are in this country (it’s) pretty much the same place we were in 1965, and we’re fighting the same battle.” Republished with the permission of The Associated Press.
Terri Sewell says that voting rights struggle continues today
Congresswoman Terri Sewell said that the voting rights struggle continues today. Sewell made her comments during a hearing of the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Elections, where she is the Ranking member. As Ranking Member, Sewell serves as the highest-ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over the administration of federal elections. “Providing oversight over federal election administration and ensuring every American has free and equitable access to the ballot is vital to our democracy,” Sewell said. “I represent Alabama’s Seventh Congressional District, a district with a long, storied history in this country’s struggle for free and fair access to the ballot. I am excited to join this Committee and continue this critical work.” “Last weekend, we marked the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in my hometown of Selma with President [Joe] Biden, a bipartisan delegation of Members of Congress, civil rights leaders, and many of the surviving Foot Soldiers of the March from Selma to Montgomery,” Sewell said. “This annual pilgrimage serves as a reminder that the violent struggle for voting rights and equal access to the ballot is not one of the distant past. As we sit here today discussing the 2022 midterm elections, we must not lose sight of the fact that the struggle for equal voting rights that occurred on the Edmund Pettus Bridge 58 years ago continues today.” Many Republicans and supporters of former President Donald Trump question the results of the election, a narrative that Sewell rejected. “There were successes in the 2022 midterms, to be sure. Millions of Americans cast their ballots, those ballots were counted, and election workers across the country performed admirably despite the threats and harassment they have faced over the last two years,” Sewell said. “The election was secure, as it was in 2020. Those who continued perpetuating the Big Lie that the last presidential election was stolen and who traffic in falsehoods about the security of our elections lost many of their races for critical statewide offices.” Many states have passed election laws to improve the integrity of future elections following the 2020 controversy. These include voter ID laws, bans on ballot harvesting, bans on curbside voting, paper ballot requirements, advance voter registration, etc. Sewell rejected efforts to make voting more difficult. “Furthermore, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, in 2022, at least 12 states enacted laws that expand access to the vote,” Sewell continued. “On the opposite side of the spectrum, however, the Brennan Center found that another 12 states enacted restrictive or election interference legislation. We should applaud increases in voter turnout, not respond to them with new restrictions.” Many on the left claim that tightening voter integrity laws adversely impact minority communities. “Additionally, while many minority communities overcame barriers to cast their ballot – it does not make those barriers fair, and it certainly does not justify or validate their existence,” Sewell said. “In the years since the Supreme Court’s egregious decision in Shelby County v. Holder, states with a history of voter discrimination are no longer required to preclear their voting laws to ensure they are not discriminatory, allowing a wave of anti-voter laws to be adopted across the country. Today, the Supreme Court continues to dismantle the Voting Rights Act.” “I am proud to be the lead sponsor of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a bill that would update and reinstate the full force of the Voting Rights Act, a law that protected voters from discrimination for more than 50 years. Additionally, House Democrats have repeatedly passed pro-democracy legislation that would protect voters’ access to the ballot,” Sewell concluded. To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email brandonmreporter@gmail.com.
Justices mull latest challenge to landmark voting rights law
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared open Tuesday to making it harder to create majority Black electoral districts, in an Alabama case that could have far-reaching effects on minority voting power across the United States. The justices heard two hours of arguments in the latest showdown over the federal Voting Rights Act, with lawsuits seeking to force Alabama to create a second Black majority congressional district. About 27% of Alabamians are Black, but they form a majority in just one of the state’s seven congressional districts. The court’s conservatives, in a 5-4 vote in February, blocked a lower court ruling that would have required a second Black majority district in time for the November elections. A similar ruling to create an additional Black majority district in Louisiana also was put on hold. Conservative high-court majorities have made it harder for racial minorities to use the Voting Rights Act in ideologically divided rulings in 2013 and 2021. A ruling for Alabama in the new case could weaken a powerful tool that civil rights groups and minority voters have used to challenge racial discrimination in redistricting. Some conservative justices seemed sympathetic to Alabama’s arguments that the court should insist on a “race-neutral” approach to redistricting and should make it harder for people claiming racial discrimination in voting to clear an early legal hurdle. Against pushback from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and the other liberal justices, Justice Samuel Alito said it’s too easy for people suing over discrimination in redistricting to win because the first bar in the legal test is too low — simply showing that another political district could be drawn in which minority residents make up a majority of voters. In practice, Alito said, “will not the plaintiffs always run the table?” The outcome appears to rest with Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Their questions suggested they may be open to a more narrow win for Alabama than the broadest outcome the state is asking for, which might even allow states to dismantle existing districts where racial minorities make up more than half the voters. Even the state’s “least far-reaching argument,” as Alito put it, would result in many fewer districts drawn to give racial minorities the opportunity to elect their candidates of choice, the court’s three liberal justices said. Jackson, the court’s first Black female justice who was hearing her second day of arguments, disagreed with arguments made by Alabama’s lawyer, Edmund LaCour Jr., that redistricting has to be done without regard to race. Constitutional amendments adopted after the Civil War were intended to give a “constitutional foundation for a piece of legislation that was designed to make people who had less opportunity and less rights equal to white citizens,” Jackson said. The Voting Rights Act “by its plain text is doing that same thing.” Justice Elena Kagan referred to the Voting Rights Act as not only “an important statute” but “one of the great achievements of American democracy” while acknowledging that recent Supreme Court cases have cut back on the law. “Now, in recent years, the statute has fared not well in this court,” she said. “You’re asking us essentially to cut back substantially on our 40 years of precedent and to make this, too, extremely difficult to prevail on, so what’s left?” Kagan said to LaCour. Partisan politics underlies the case. Republicans who dominate elective office in Alabama have been resistant to creating a second district with a Democratic-leaning Black majority that could send another Democrat to Congress. Two appointees of President Donald Trump were on the three-judge panel that unanimously held that Alabama likely violated the landmark 1965 law by diluting Black voting strength. The judges found that Alabama has concentrated Black voters in one district, while spreading them out among the others to make it impossible for them to elect a candidate of their choice. Alabama’s Black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district, the judges found. Alabama argues that the lower court ruling would force it to sort voters by race and the state insists it is taking a “race neutral” approach to redistricting. That argument could resonate with conservative justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts. He has opposed most consideration of race in voting both as a justice and in his time as a lawyer in Republican presidential administrations. Roberts said little Tuesday to telegraph his vote. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch also had little or nothing to say in court, but Thomas, in particular, has voted consistently to limit the reach of anti-discrimination laws. The arguments were the first Supreme Court case involving race for Jackson. A challenge to affirmative action in college admissions is set for arguments on October 31. A decision in Merrill v. Milligan is expected by late June. Republished with the permission of The Associated Press.
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
GOP scrutiny of Black districts may deepen after court move
For decades, Democratic Rep. Al Lawson’s Florida district has stretched like a rubber band from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, scooping up as many Black voters as possible to comply with requirements that minority communities get grouped together so they can select their own leaders and flex their power in Washington. But the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is taking the unusual step of asking Florida’s Supreme Court whether Lawson’s plurality-Black district can be broken up into whiter — and more Republican — districts. That type of request might typically face steep hurdles under state and federal laws that are meant to protect representation of marginalized communities in the nation’s politics. But the ground rules may be shifting after the U.S. Supreme Court sided this week with Republicans in Alabama to block efforts to ensure that Black voters are adequately represented in Congress by adding a second majority-Black district in the state. The ruling stunned civil rights groups, who have watched the court’s conservative majority steadily eat away at the Voting Rights Act for decades. While the law’s rules governing how to draw legislative lines based on race still stand, advocates worry the justices are prepared to act with renewed fervor to eliminate remaining protections in the landmark civil rights legislation. That, some worry, could embolden Republicans in places like Florida to take aim at districts like Lawson’s and ultimately reduce Black voters’ influence on Capitol Hill. “That has had an effect, as we’ve seen, on Black political power at all levels of government,” Kathryn Sadasivan, an NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney who worked on the Alabama case, said of prior erosions of the Voting Rights Act. Republicans argue that the Alabama case is about providing clarity on redistricting rules. As it stands, mapmakers can be sued if they consider race too much but also if they fail to consider it the way the Voting Rights Act mandates and omit districts with certain shares of a minority population. “In the last 15 years, the court has said if race predominates, your map is going to be struck down, but if you don’t look” at race properly, you violate the Voting Rights Act, Jason Torchinsky, general counsel to the National Republican Redistricting Trust, said on a call with reporters on Wednesday. “The court has been very inconsistent with its guidance to legislators here, and we hope the Alabama decision brings some clarity.” Torchinsky is representing DeSantis in his case before the Florida Supreme Court and would not comment on the case. Republicans contend it is legally different from Alabama. The first hurdle is not the Voting Rights Act but rather Florida’s own state redistricting law, which prioritizes racial equity in similar ways. Torchinsky and other lawyers for DeSantis have argued that courts have to provide a clear legal standard for whether mapmakers can contort district lines in a quest for racial fairness. “After all,” Desantis’ attorneys wrote to the Florida Supreme Court of the rationale for Lawson’s district, “governmental actions based on race are presumptively unconstitutional.” The Florida case is becoming the latest test of how states’ court systems handle the politically charged redistricting battle. A decade ago, Florida’s Supreme Court struck down maps drawn by the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature because they violated the state’s ban on partisan redistricting. This cycle, the state Senate proposed maps that mostly kept the status quo in the state’s current 27 congressional seats while adding a 28th district that should favor Republicans. But, with Democrats doing better than expected in redistricting nationwide, DeSantis, a possible 2024 presidential contender, pushed for a more aggressive approach that could net the GOP three seats. But the state’s Supreme Court a decade ago was overwhelmingly Democratic. Now it’s dominated by Republican appointees. The question in Florida, said David Vicuna of the anti-gerrymandering group Common Cause, is “will courts put aside whatever are their own personal party preferences and adhere to the law?” Similar questions swirl around the nation’s highest court and its 6-3 conservative majority. Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, mapmakers are required to draw districts with a plurality or majority of African Americans or other minority groups if they’re in a relatively compact area with a white population that votes starkly differently from them. For decades, the GOP went along with this approach because it led to states, particularly in the South, having a handful of districts packed with Democratic-leaning African American voters, leaving the remaining seats whiter and more Republican. But a series of adverse legal decisions over recent decades and increased Democratic aggressiveness have turned the tables. “Now we see kind of a flipping of this, where Democrats and voting rights plaintiffs are saying, ‘You have to create more majority-minority districts,’ and Republicans are saying, ‘Then we’re taking race too much into account,’” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine. The issues came to a head in Alabama, where civil rights groups and Democrats joined forces to argue that the state’s GOP-drawn maps were unconstitutional because they packed most Black voters into only one of seven congressional districts. A three-judge panel agreed, potentially opening the door to similar new plurality-Black districts in states with similar demographics like Louisiana and South Carolina. But the Supreme Court on Monday stayed that order in a 5-4 decision, saying it would hear full arguments in its fall term and issue a ruling after that, presumably next year. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for two other dissenting liberal justices, warned that the court was already reinterpreting the Voting Rights Act by stopping the lower court’s order. Civil rights attorneys, while hopeful they can persuade the court’s six-justice conservative majority to maintain the standards they’ve used for decades, acknowledge that the Voting Rights Act has been hollowed out over the years. In 2013, the court ruled the federal government could no longer use the VRA to require certain states with a history of discrimination to run voting and map changes by the Justice Department first to ensure they’re not discriminatory. Two of the states that
High court’s Alabama ruling sparks alarm over voting rights
The Supreme Court’s decision to halt efforts to create a second mostly Black congressional district in Alabama for the 2022 election sparked fresh warnings Tuesday that the court is becoming too politicized, eroding the Voting Rights Act and reviving the need for Congress to intervene. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority put on hold a lower court ruling that Alabama must draw new congressional districts to increase Black voting power. Civil rights groups had argued that the state, with its “sordid record” of racial discrimination, drew new maps by “packing” Black voters into one single district and “cracking” Black voters from other districts in ways that dilute their electoral power. Black voters are 26% of Alabama’s electorate. In its 5-4 decision late Monday, the Supreme Court said it would review the case in full, a future legal showdown in the months to come that voting advocates fear could further gut the protections in the landmark Civil Rights-era law. It’s “the latest example of the Supreme Court hacking away at the protections of the voting rights act of 1965,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “Congress must act. We must restore the Voting Rights Act.” The outcome all but ensures Alabama will continue to send mostly white Republicans to Washington after this fall’s midterm elections and applies new pressure on Congress to shore up voter protections after a broader elections bill collapsed last month. And the decision shows the growing power of the high court’s conservative majority as President Joe Biden is under his own pressures to name a liberal nominee to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. Rep. Terri Sewell, the only Black representative from Alabama, said the court’s decision underscores the need for Congress to pass her bill, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, to update and ensure the law’s historic protections. “Black Alabamians deserve nothing less,” Sewell said in a statement. The case out of Alabama is one of the most important legal tests of the new congressional maps stemming from the 2020 census count. It comes in the aftermath of court decisions that have widely been viewed as chiseling away at race-based protections of the Voting Rights Act. Alabama and other states with a known history of voting rights violations were no longer under federal oversight, or “preclearance,” from the Justice Department for changes to their election practices after the court, in its 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision, struck down the bill’s formula as outdated. As states nationwide adjust their congressional districts to fit population and demographic data, Alabama’s Republican-led Legislature drew up new maps last fall that were immediately challenged by civil rights groups on behalf of Black voters in the state. Late last month, a three-judge lower court, which includes two judges appointed by former President Donald Trump, had ruled that the state had probably violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters. This finding was rooted, in part, in the fact that the state did not create a second district in which Black voters made up a majority or close to it. Given that more than one person in four in Alabama is Black, the plaintiffs had argued the single Black district is far less than one person, one vote. “Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the three-judge panel wrote in the 225-page ruling. The lower court gave the Alabama legislature until Friday to come up with a remedial plan. Late Monday, the Supreme Court, after an appeal from Alabama, issued a stay. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, part of the conservative majority, said the lower court’s order for a new map came too close to the 2022 election. Chief Justice John Roberts joined his three more liberal colleagues in dissent. “It’s just a really disturbing ruling,” said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., a member of the Judiciary Committee, who called the Supreme Court’s decision “a setback to racial equity, to ideals of one person, one vote.” Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, and the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus said the decision “hits at the guts of voting rights.” She told The Associated Press: “We’re afraid of what will happen from Alabama to Texas to Florida and even to the great state of Ohio.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the court decision exposes the need for Congress to legislate to protect voting rights. The erosion of those rights is “exactly what the Voting Rights Act is in place to prevent.” Critics went beyond assailing the decision at hand to assert that the court has become political. “I know the court likes to say it’s not partisan, that it’s apolitical, but this seems to be a very political decision,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., tweeted that the court majority has “zero legitimacy.” Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., tweeted that the court’s action was “Jim Crow 2.0.” Alabama Republicans welcomed the court’s decision. “It is great news,” said Rep. Mo Brooks, who is running for the GOP nomination for Senate. He called the lower court ruling an effort to “usurp” the decisions made by the state’s legislature. The justices will, at some later date, decide whether the map produced by the state violates the voting rights law, a case that could call into question “decades of this Court’s precedent” about Section 2 of the act, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent. Section 2 prohibits racial and other discrimination in voting procedures. Voting advocates see the arguments ahead as a showdown over voting rights they say are being slowly but methodically altered by the Roberts court. The Supreme Court in the Shelby decision did away with the preclearance formula under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. And last summer, the conservative majority in Bronvich vs. the Democratic National Committee upheld voting limits in an Arizona case concerning early ballots that a lower court had found discriminatory under Section 2. With the Alabama case, the court
Supreme Court sides with GOP in Alabama election map case
The Supreme Court on Monday put on hold a lower court ruling that Alabama must draw new congressional districts before the 2022 elections to increase Black voting power. The high court order boosts Republican chances to hold six of the state’s seven seats in the House of Representatives. The court’s action, by a 5-4 vote, means the upcoming elections will be conducted under a map drawn by Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature that contains one majority-Black district, represented by a Black Democrat, in a state in which more than a quarter of the population is Black. A three-judge lower court, including two judges appointed by former President Donald Trump, had ruled that the state had likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters by not creating a second district in which they made up a majority, or close to it. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, part of the conservative majority, said the lower court acted too close to the 2022 election cycle. Chief Justice John Roberts joined his three more liberal colleagues in dissent. The justices will, at some later date, decide whether the map produced by the state violates the landmark voting rights law, a case that could call into question “decades of this Court’s precedent about Section 2 of the VRA,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent. That decision presumably will govern elections in 2024 through the end of the decade in Alabama and could affect minority political representation elsewhere in the country, too. Alabama lawmakers redrew the state’s congressional districts following the results of the 2020 census. Several groups of voters sued, arguing that the new maps diluted the voting power of Black residents. In a unanimous ruling in late January, the three judges said that the groups were likely to succeed in showing that the state had violated the Voting Rights Act. As a result, the panel ordered lawmakers to redraw the districts so Black voters would be a majority, or close to it, in two districts, not one. The ruling ran more than 200 pages. The panel wrote that “we do not regard the question … as a close one.” Alabama asked the Supreme Court to put the ruling on hold while it appeals, and the justices agreed. The state argued that it drew the new map guided by race-neutral principles and that the new map is similar to past maps. More than a dozen mostly Republican-led states had filed a brief urging the justices to side with Alabama and allow it to use the maps it originally drew. Deuel Ross, a lawyer for Alabamians who sued, called the state’s congressional districts “a textbook case of a Voting Rights Act violation” and said the high court’s decision to intervene is disheartening. But the facts are clear, Ross, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “Alabama’s current congressional map violates the Voting Rights Act,” he said. “The litigation will continue, and we are confident that Black Alabamians will eventually have the congressional map they deserve — one that fairly represents all voters.” Roberts, who typically votes against consideration of race, wrote that he shares some of Alabama’s concerns but still would have let the redrawn districts govern the 2022 election and have future elections governed by the ultimate outcome in the case. Kavanaugh, writing to explain his vote, stressed that the court has repeatedly declined in the past to change the rules close to an election. “When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled. Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties, and voters, among others. It is one thing for a State on its own to toy with its election laws close to a State’s elections. But it is quite another thing for a federal court to swoop in and re-do a State’s election laws in the period close to an election,” he wrote in an opinion Alito joined. Taking issue with Kavanaugh, Kagan noted that the lower court ruled months before any votes will be cast. She criticized the conservatives for using the emergency application process known as the shadow docket “to signal or make changes in the law, without anything approaching full briefing and argument.” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Justices weigh Alabama’s bid to stop redistricting order
The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing Alabama’s request to freeze a court order requiring the state to draw new congressional lines and create a second district with a significant number of Black voters. Alabama has asked the court to halt an injunction issued by a three-judge panel blocking the use of the current map after the panel found it likely violates the Voting Rights Act. The Alabama attorney general argued the ruling will throw 2022 elections into chaos and require the state to put race above other redistricting criteria. But lawyers for people and organizations that brought the initial lawsuit dispute that and argue the current lines — similar to those in use since the 1990s — do not reflect a state that has grown more racially diverse. “This is very much a textbook case of a Voting Rights Act violation,” said NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior counsel Deuel Ross, whose organization represented the plaintiffs in the case. The three-judge panel last month found Alabama’s map, drawn by the GOP-dominated Alabama Legislature, likely violates the Voting Rights Act because, “Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress.” The decision cited Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act which prohibits racial discrimination in election procedures. Alabama’s congressional delegation has for years consisted of one Black representative elected from a heavily Black district and six white representatives elected from heavily white districts. The judges added that any “remedial plan will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.” U.S. Census numbers show the state has grown racially more diverse since 1990. Black people make up about 27% of the state’s population while white people make up 63% of the population. “We think that Alabama has an obligation to draw fair maps that are reflective of the state’s very rich history of diversity, not just racial diversity, but diversity in terms of representation for everyone,” Ross said. The Alabama attorney general argues the ruling will improperly require states to prioritize race over other redistricting criteria. “The court-ordered redraw marks a radical change from decades of Alabama’s congressional plans. It will result in a map that can be drawn only by placing race first above race-neutral districting criteria, sorting and splitting voters across the State on the basis of race alone,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall wrote in the state’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Fourteen conservative-led states signed on to a brief in support of Alabama, arguing that the ruling and “absence of clarity no doubt means litigation will ensue across the country over new maps.” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry filed a brief along with attorneys general from Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia. Lawyers for plaintiffs argued Alabama is misrepresenting the ruling as prioritizing race instead of assessing whether an additional majority-Black district could be created consistent with compactness and traditional districting principles. It is unclear when the court will rule but Alabama faces a looming deadline to get new maps in place unless justices intervene. The three-judge panel pushed back the congressional candidate qualification deadline with political parties from Friday until February 11 to allow the Legislature the opportunity to enact a remedial plan. Alabama lawmakers appear to be waiting on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. The legislative reapportionment committee has not met since the ruling of the three-judge panel, some members said. “The attorney general has filed motions of stay and of appeal with the Supreme Court and we’re just going to need to see what the outcomes are, Senate President Pro Tem Greg Reed said. The three judges that issued the unanimous ruling consisted of one judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton — Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus — and two judges appointed by former President Donald Trump — U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco and U.S. District Judge Terry Moorer. Evan Milligan, a Montgomery resident and the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said Alabama likely would have lost a congressional seat if not for the population growth of minority groups, including people born in other countries. “To produce maps that undercount the voting strength of the very population that’s contributing to the ability of the state to even have seven congressional districts is even more indefensible to me,” Milligan said. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Alabama appeals to Supreme Court in redistricting fight
Alabama on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to place a hold on a ruling that will require the state to draw new congressional districts, Lawyers for the state asked the justices to stay a preliminary injunction issued by a three-judge panel on Monday. The injunction blocks the state from using current congressional districts in the upcoming elections. The three judges had ruled Alabama’s current map likely violates the Voting Rights Act and that the state should have an additional district with a significant number of Black voters. In the emergency filing, lawyers for the state argued that the injunction will throw state elections into chaos and require the state to draw districts based primarily on race instead of other factors. “Without this Court’s intervention, Alabama’s only choices are effectively no choices at all: a state-drawn racially gerrymandered map or a court-drawn racially gerrymandered map,” lawyers for the state wrote. “Moreover, this overhaul of Alabama’s congressional map at this late hour would require the last-minute reassignment of hundreds of thousands of voters to new districts and could force candidates and groups seeking ballot access to obtain thousands of new signatures.” Facing a tight timeline, Alabama asked the court to issue an administrative stay followed by a stay or an injunction pending appeal. The state’s qualifying deadline for political candidates was Friday, but the three-judge panel extended the deadline until February 11 for congressional candidates. Alabama is currently represented by one Black Democrat elected from the state’s only majority-Black district and six white Republicans elected from heavily white districts. About 27% of the state’s population is Black. The three-judge panel wrote Monday that, “Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress” under Alabama’s current map. The judges wrote that any remedial plan “will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Judges maintain order for Alabama to draw new districts
A three-judge panel on Thursday refused to stay its decision that effectively orders Alabama to draw new congressional districts before the 2022 elections and to create a second district of which Black voters are a sizeable portion of the population. The panel denied Alabama’s request to put a preliminary injunction on hold as the state appeals the decision. In a sometimes strongly worded ruling, the judges reiterated findings they believe show the current map likely violates the Voting Rights Act and that demographic shifts merit the creation of a second district — instead of this one — with a substantial number of minority voters. The judges wrote they are “aware that the preliminary injunction is consequential” but said it was necessary. “We discern no basis for a finding that this case is the extraordinary case in which we must allow an election to proceed under a map that we have determined — on the basis of a substantial evidentiary record — very likely violates the Voting Rights Act,” the judges wrote. A spokesman said the Alabama attorney general’s office did not have a comment on the ruling. Alabama is currently represented by one Black Democrat elected from the state’s only majority-Black district and white Republicans elected from heavily white districts. About 27% of the state’s population is Black. The three-judge panel said it was a “red herring” for the state to argue the current districts are lawful because they resemble long-used districts. “The argument also ignores the obvious reality that as maps age, demographic changes may eventually turn a lawful map into an unlawful map,” the judges wrote. Alabama’s Black population rose from 25.26% of the population in the 1990 census to 27.1% of the population in the 2020 census. At the same time, the white population dropped from 73.65% of the population in the 1990 census to 63.12% of the population in 2020. The three judges that issued the ruling consisted of one judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton — Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus and two judges appointed by former President Donald Trump — U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco and U.S. District Judge Terry Moorer. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Alabama’s new congressional districts map blocked by judges
Federal judges on Monday blocked Alabama from using newly drawn congressional districts in upcoming elections, ruling that the state should have two districts — instead of one — in which Black voters are a sizeable portion of the electorate. “Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the three-judge panel wrote in the 225-page ruling that found plaintiffs are “substantially likely” to prevail on claims that the current districts violate the Voting Rights Act. “We find that the plaintiffs will suffer an irreparable harm if they must vote in the 2022 congressional elections based on a redistricting plan that violates federal law,” the ruling stated. The judges blocked use of the map and stayed the candidate qualification deadline with political parties from Friday until Feb. 11 to allow the Legislature the opportunity to enact a remedial plan. “As the Legislature considers such plans, it should be mindful of the practical reality, based on the ample evidence of intensely racially polarized voting adduced during the preliminary injunction proceedings, that any remedial plan will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it,” the judges wrote. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office said the ruling will be appealed. “The Attorney General’s Office strongly disagrees with the court’s decision and will be appealing in the coming days,” spokesman Mike Lewis wrote in an email. The Alabama attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to an email late Monday seeking comment on the ruling. Alabama’s seven-member congressional delegation consists of six Republicans elected from heavily white districts and one Democrat elected from the only majority-Black district. The Alabama Legislature last year approved congressional district lines that maintain one majority-Black district. About 26% of Alabama’s population is Black, and some lawmakers argued the state should have a second congressional district with a significant African-American population. “It’s past time for Alabama to move beyond its sordid history of racial discrimination at the polls and to listen to and be responsive to the needs and concerns of voters of color. Not ensuring access to the ballot for all of the people and communities in Alabama is holding this state back from realizing its full potential,” Tish Gotell Faulks, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, said in a statement. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
