Federal Judges to Make New Alabama Election Map After Lawmakers Ignore SCOTUS Ruling
© AP Photo / Matt Rourke
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A federal court has rejected a new congressional election map created by Alabama lawmakers that flouted recommendations by the US Supreme Court, saying it will now redraw the map itself. It’s the final act in a multi-year drama in a state infamous for defying federal racial equality efforts.
Three judges on a federal appeals court on Tuesday unanimously struck down the new election map presented by the Alabama Legislature for the November 2024 elections, finding state lawmakers made no serious effort to follow the US Supreme Court’s June ruling on the subject.
“And we are struck by the extraordinary circumstance we face,” the judge said in their opinion.
“We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature - faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district - responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district,” they wrote.
The high court found in June in Milligan v. Allen that the Cotton State had to create a second congressional district with an African-American majority or something “close to it.” The state has seven congressmen in the US House of Representatives, but just one majority-Black district, despite 25.8% of its population being of African origin.
That ruling was based on the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a historic piece of legislation that banned essentially all practices that had been used to deny voting rights to African-Americans in the “Jim Crow” South - the colloquial name for the separate-but-equal system of white supremacy that had prevailed in the former Confederate states since the end of the Civil War, when the enslavement of Black people was abolished. The 1965 law requires those states with a history of racial discrimination to have their election rules verified by the federal government, including voting districts.
However, when the Alabama Legislature redrew the map in July, it left the single majority-Black district in place, with the remaining Black vote diluted by being spread out across several other districts that had white majorities. One district had its Black voter proportion increased from 30% to 40% - hardly “close to” a majority as the court ordered.
The appeals court’s ruling on Tuesday was made all the more remarkable by the fact that two of the three judges - Judges Anna M. Manasco and Terry F. Moorer - were appointed by former US President Donald Trump, a Republican. The third, Judge Stanley Marcus, was appointed by Democratic former US President Bill Clinton.
In a statement following the federal court’s ruling on Tuesday, the office of Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said it believed the state had followed the high court’s order.
“While we are disappointed in today’s decision, we strongly believe that the Legislature’s map complies with the Voting Rights Act and the recent decision of the US Supreme Court,” Marshall’s office said. “We intend to promptly seek review from the Supreme Court to ensure that the State can use its lawful congressional districts in 2024 and beyond.”
However, with just a few weeks to go before the October 1 deadline given by state officials for a new map to be in place for next year’s election, the appeals court judges said there wasn’t time for Alabama lawmakers to make yet another new map, and they would not give the Legislature “a second bite at the apple” after having failed to comply once already.
Instead, the judges themselves will draw the new map.
“We have no reason to believe that allowing the Legislature still another opportunity to draw yet another map will yield a map that includes an additional opportunity district,” the judges wrote. “Moreover, counsel for the State has informed the Court that, even if the Court were to grant the Legislature yet another opportunity to draw a map, it would be practically impossible for the Legislature to reconvene and do so in advance of the 2024 election cycle.”
In a statement, a group of plaintiffs whose lawsuit was consolidated into the ruling by the high court compared the Legislature’s move to the 1963 attempt by then-Alabama Governor George Wallace, a vocal proponent of white supremacy, to block the integration of Black students into the University of Alabama.
“He moved only when the federal government forced him to do so,” they wrote. “History is repeating itself and the district court’s decision confirms that Alabama is again on the losing side. We demand that Alabama again move out of the way and obey our laws - we demand our voting rights.”
The existing Black-majority district, the Seventh Congressional District, was also created by court order in 1992 according to the 1965 Civil Rights Act. When Earl Hilliard, Sr. was elected to Congress the following year representing the Seventh District, he was the first Black delegate sent to Washington, DC, by Alabama since Reps. Josiah Walls and Jerimiah Haralson, two former slaves, left office in 1877, 116 years earlier.
