Once the heart of the Confederacy and the civil rights movement, Alabama is now in the middle of a new racial showdown: a US Supreme Court case that could make it harder for Black candidates to get elected to Congress.
As they open their new term next week, the justices will consider whether Alabama violated the Voting Rights Act by drawing its congressional map in a way that ensures the state will have just one Black representative for the next decade. The court may have tipped its hand in February when it temporarily blocked a ruling that would have required a second heavily Black district for the Nov. 8 election.
The case gives the court’s conservative majority a chance to transform redistricting rules and sharply curtail what critics call “racial gerrymandering.” At the same time, the clash risks exacerbating a sense among some minorities that their votes count for less than those of White people in a state that has seven congressional districts and is 27% Black.
“We’re asking for a piece of the pie, too,” said Khadidah Stone, a Montgomery resident and one of the voters challenging the GOP-drawn map. “Other communities have their districts. Why can’t we have ours as well? It’s already there. We have 27%. It’s enough for us to have another district.”
The case, which is being argued on Tuesday, is one of two redistricting disputes on the court’s 2022-23 agenda, along with a far-reaching North Carolina
The high court case could have broad ramifications, giving lawmakers far more leeway to draw maps without considering the impact on racial minorities. It’s likely to affect pending litigation over congressional maps in Texas, Louisiana and Georgia, as well as similar fights over state and local voting lines.
The Alabama dispute joins an Oct. 31 college affirmative admissions
Racial History
Alabama’s racial past forms an indelible part of its present. In the capital of Montgomery, the house where
Forty miles away is the city of Selma, where a 1965 attack on civil rights marchers by state troopers spurred passage of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark law designed to protect minority voters at the polling place.
Alabama might have no majority-Black districts were it not for the Voting Rights Act. A court-ordered map led to
The districts have remained largely the same since then, as has the delegation’s racial breakdown. Democratic Representative
Sewell supports a second majority-Black district, even though doing so would probably add White voters to her district, which now has a 55% Black voting-age population.
“I’m the lone vote on a lot of really important bills that have to do with civil rights, that have to do with funding for underrepresented communities and communities of color,” Sewell said in an interview. “Having someone at the table who is from those communities, chosen by those communities is important.”
Republican Resistance
Five of Sewell’s Republican colleagues in the Alabama delegation are urging the court to reject a second majority-Black district, saying the Voting Rights Act doesn’t require proportional representation.
“I don’t feel that most African Americans in Alabama feel disenfranchised,” said Representative
Although the legal issues focus on race, the partisan impact is inescapable. A second heavily Black district would probably give Alabama a second House Democrat.
The Republican National Committee and National Republican Redistricting Trust are opposing a second majority-Black district in the state, while the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and the Biden administration back an additional district.
‘Less Opportunity’
A three-judge panel said Alabama was probably violating the Voting Rights Act with a map drawn by the GOP-controlled legislature.
Applying a multifactor test from a 1986 Supreme Court ruling, the panel said that Black voters “have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress.” The panel included two judges appointed by former President
In his appeal, Alabama Attorney General
“Congress cannot enforce a prohibition on discrimination by mandating discrimination,” he argued in court papers.
Marshall, a Republican who declined to be interviewed in advance of the argument, contends that any effort to draw a second Black district would requiring linking voters in Mobile County, in the southwest corner of the state, with people on the eastern edge of the state, more than 250 miles (402 kilometers) away.
“The notion that somehow being fair requires drawing these bizarre shapes just to hit certain racial targets is what I think the Supreme Court’s going have a hard time with,” said Jason Torchinsky, who filed a brief for the National Republican Redistricting Trust.
Snaking Lines
But Evan Milligan, another plaintiff in the case, says putting predominantly Black communities in the same district makes sense given their shared history and policy interests. On a drive through the outskirts of his hometown of Montgomery, in a heavily Black neighborhood that lies in Republican Representative
“I could take you to Hale County, Perry County, Macon County, any of the rural Black Belt communities we would see things that are very similar, and the same in Mobile,” Milligan said. He cited diabetes, maternal mortality and entrepreneurial support as key issues for all those areas.
The challengers say they offered more geographically compact maps than the Republican-drawn lines, including configurations that bring the rest of Montgomery and the Black Belt into majority-Black districts.
The current lines now snake through Montgomery, carving up the majority-Black city so that two-thirds of it is represented by Moore, and split the Black Belt into four districts. The effect is to dilute Black voters’ strength, putting more than necessary to elect Sewell in the 7th District while ensuring Black candidates don’t have a chance in other districts, the challengers say.
Their arguments might have already succeeded were it not for one other piece of Alabama history: a 2013 Supreme Court ruling. Using an Alabama case, the court
The latest case is a “direct descendant” of the 2013 ruling, said
“This is the first election cycle in which we no longer have the protection of preclearance,” Nelson said. “There’s no way that this plan with the disproportionate suppression of black political power that it has would have been able to survive preclearance.”
The case is Merrill v. Milligan, 21-1086.
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