Ordered by the Supreme Court to produce a ballot paper that no longer illegally dilutes the power of Alabama’s black voters, state lawmakers now face a major battle to come up with an acceptable replacement by the end of this week to come.
Just over a month after the court’s surprise ruling, the Alabama legislature will meet on Monday for a special five-day session, with the Republican majority giving little public indication of how it intends to fulfill a mandate to enact a . to create a second district that would allow Black voters to elect a representative of their choice – someone who could very well be a Democrat.
The effects of the revised map, due Friday and approved by a federal court, could reverberate across the country, with other states in the South facing similar voting rights challenges and Republicans seeking a razor-thin majority next year. in the US House of Representatives.
The session also comes at a pivotal moment in the debate over the constitutionality of taking race into account in government decisions, as conservatives have increasingly demolished the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other long-standing judicial protections focused on equality and race.
“The eyes of the nation are on you,” Evan Milligan, one of several Alabama residents who challenged the card’s legality, told lawmakers Thursday at a committee hearing in Montgomery. “If you can cut out the noise, look within – you can look at history, you can make a mark on history that will set a standard for this country.”
Alabama has a long list of bitter disputes over enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, a groundbreaking law that emerged from the civil rights movement whose key provisions were overturned by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling. Litigation forced the creation of Alabama’s first majority-black congressional district in 1992, and the seat has been represented by a black Democrat ever since.
But the current battle stems from lawsuits filed to oppose the map drawn up after the 2020 census. In a state where 27 percent of the population is black, the Republican-controlled legislature has put nearly a third of the black population in that single district. The state’s remaining six districts each elected a white Republican.
There is little disagreement that voting in Alabama is highly polarized, but state legislature lawyers attributed the situation to politics rather than race. (The Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that a gerrymander discriminating against a party’s voters is a political problem, not a legal one.)
“Black Alabamians’ ‘candidates of choice’ tend to lose elections in Alabama not because they are black or because they receive black support, but because they are Democrats,” the state’s attorneys wrote.
And with about 80 percent of Alabama’s black voters identifying as Democrats or leaning toward Democratic candidates, according to the Pew Research Center, “that just makes them easy prey in terms of redistribution,” says Seth C. McKee, a professor at the University of Oklahoma. who has written about political realignment in the South. “And once the Republicans are in power, it’s just hard for them not to dominate.”
But a three-judge federal panel unanimously said the map most likely violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered the map redrawn four months before the 2022 primary. The Supreme Court agreed to consider the challenge, but allowed the card to take effect before the November election.
Many experts expected the Supreme Court in the Alabama case to say what it essentially said in its decision to ban affirmative action in education: Allowing to remedy discrimination against one group inevitably leads to discrimination against other groups.
In June, however, the court narrowly upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the key remaining clause of the law, which prohibits any election law or rule that discriminates on the basis of race, color or language. That decision has already had repercussions elsewhere: A similar lawsuit is now underway in Louisiana, while Georgia voting rights advocates have begun sparring with the state about whether the ruling will affect similar lawsuits there.
“We are already showing how this opinion will have ripple effects,” said Abha Khanna, who represented some Alabama plaintiffs as head of the Elias Law Group’s redistribution practice. She added, “You’re sending a message to states and jurisdictions.”
The Alabama legislature now has until Friday to create another map that will receive approval from a federal court, and has called for public proposals. Should the legislature fail, the card could be challenged again, leaving open the possibility that the court would draw its own card and scrap the legislature altogether.
“It is critical that Alabama be fairly and accurately represented in Washington,” said Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, as she formally recalled the legislature for the special session. “Our legislature knows our state better than the federal courts.”
But it presents Republicans with a task that could jeopardize the electoral safety of any of them in Congress. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report now marks the once solid Republican First and Second Congressional districts as toss-ups, citing “the assumption that one of their seats will eventually become a majority black seat in Montgomery and Mobile that comfortably elects a Democrat.”
On Thursday, several black Republicans spoke at the committee hearing, including Belinda Thomas, a Dale County councilwoman and Republican Party official who later described herself as “living proof” that the current map allowed black candidates to pass . Some residents and officials also expressed concerns about reducing the representation of rural communities and economic opportunities under some of the proposed maps.
Democrats seemed divided on which plan to support, and some lawmakers supported a plan that relies on a combination of traditional Democratic voting blocs to create a new district to avoid drawing on racial lines. At least one of the plaintiffs wore a T-shirt featuring their favorite map, which would anchor the 18 counties of Alabama’s Black Belt, the stretch of historically rich land that fed slave-labor-worked cotton plantations, into two counties with at least 50 percent of black voters. population.
“I want me and my community to sit at the table instead of being on the menu,” said Shalela Dowdy, a Mobile resident and one of the plaintiffs.
But notably absent from Thursday’s public discussion was any plan supported by the Republican supermajority. State Representative Chris Pringle, a Republican from Mobile, said a final map would be dealt before a committee meeting on Monday, though Democrats weren’t looking to be left out of the process and because the public would have little time to make a final decision. plan to review.
“This is a really anguished process,” said State Representative Chris England, a Democrat from Tuscaloosa. He added that “everyone else has presented the cards they believe best represent the state of Alabama, giving everyone a chance to be represented, but the vast majority are not.”
Mr Pringle said the committee charged with overseeing the creation of the new map had been overwhelmed by a number of submissions, including from France and New Zealand. Just over a dozen had been made public online or at a hearing with Mr. England sharing a few more cards circulated among the committee on Twitter on fridaynight.
“We’re pretty overwhelmed,” said Mr. Pringle.
Adam Liptak contributed reporting from Washington. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.