Black Alabama Voters Advance Suit Alleging Biased Voting Rules

Alabama lost its bid to dismiss a suit alleging enforcement of a mail-in voting rule and a ban on curbside ballots during the pandemic will unduly burden Black residents this fall, according to a federal judge’s ruling.

Charges of a “pervasive legacy of discrimination” against Black Alabamians supports voting advocacy group People First Alabama’s claims under Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act, Judge Abdul K. Kallon said Monday for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

Alabama requires witnesses to sign off on a voter’s mail-in ballot and bans curbside voting. Kallon blocked those rules for the July primary runoff, based generally on disability discrimination concerns and not because of the VRA.

State election officials appealed that order before voluntarily dismissing their challenge a few weeks later. The case returned to the Northern District of Alabama, where the plaintiffs have set their sights on voting procedures for the November general election.

Alabama election officials, in moving to dismiss the group’s suit, argued that any abridgment of the right to vote in the fall would be because of the pandemic, not because of a voter’s race or color.

But People First Alabama successfully argued to Kallon that it has support for its claims asserting that the effects of the pandemic on the Black community can’t be unspooled from the legacy of discrimination it has endured.

Black Americans are at a higher risk of contracting Covid-19 in part because of their “dense living situations—a consequence of historic housing discrimination—and to the fact that African Americans are more likely to work in jobs that increase their exposure to Covid-19,” People First alleges.

African Americans also suffer from underlying conditions like diabetes, sickle cell anemia, hypertension, and kidney failure at a higher rate than their White counterparts, the group says. These conditions make contracting the respiratory virus even more dangerous for those patients, public health officials have said.

The disparity in underlying conditions between Black and other communities is due to discrimination in healthcare and “the effects of housing and employment discrimination that concentrated African Americans in areas with higher environmental risks,” People First also says.

The plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged that Alabama’s ban on curbside voting and witness requirements for absentee ballots could produce an unlawfully disparate impact on Black residents in the state if the rules are enforced, the court said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund Inc. represent People First Alabama.

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office represents the state.

The case is People First of Ala. v. Merrill, N.D. Ala., No. 20-cv-00619, 8/17/20.