Alabama Republican lawmakers say they are trying to satisfy a landmark US supreme court order to draw a new district giving a voice to Black voters, but with hours to go before a court-ordered deadline on Friday, experts said proposals fell far short of what the law requires.
The Republican-controlled state house and senate were scheduled to meet on Friday and could advance separate plans increasing the share of Black voters in Alabama’s second congressional district. Legislative leaders say they intended to meet the deadline, meaning the two chambers must reach one plan.
Both plans preserve the current Black majority of the seventh district. But neither plan comes close to creating a second Black majority district in a state that is 27% Black.
A three-judge panel ruled in 2022 that the current legislative map likely violates the federal Voting Rights Act and said any map should include two districts where “Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it”. This June, the supreme court upheld that decision.
“I think this is another good example, maybe the latest and perhaps the most brazen, of a legislature that didn’t want to take the hint,” said Kareem Crayton, senior director for voting and representation at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.
“They have pretended as though the court didn’t say what it said.”
The Brennan Center filed a brief supporting the plaintiffs before the supreme court.
An analysis by the Associated Press, using redistricting software, shows the second district proposed by state senators, with a Black voting-age population of 38%, has been routinely and easily won by Republicans in recent elections. The house proposal, with a Black voting-age population of 42%, is closely split between Democrats and Republicans, but could still shut out Black voter preferences.
The plaintiffs who won the supreme court case have vowed to fight either proposal if enacted. They say it is crucial Black people have more representation in Alabama and other states. The debate in Alabama could be mirrored in Louisiana, Georgia, Texas and other states.
Republican leaders said they were trying to draw districts that are compact in size and keep together communities of interest. One issue has been whether to carve up the Mobile and Dothan areas to add Black voters to a second Black-dominated district, as those who sued Alabama proposed.
The senate president pro tem, Greg Reed, a Republican, said the senate plan focused more on keeping communities together and keeping districts as compact as possible, and less on Black voting-age population.
“How do we keep those communities together, how do they wind up being recognized as communities of interest? That’s a big decision,” Reed said.
Reed said the house map, with 42% Black voters in a second district, was probably as high as lawmakers were willing to go. But those who study redistricting say that is simply not enough, considering how sharply Alabama voters divide along racial lines.
“I would think at 38% or 42% that the court isn’t going to sign off,” said Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political scientist who wrote a book about redistricting. He predicted the three-judge panel will end up drawing its own map.
The senate minority leader, Bobby Singleton, a Greensboro Democrat, said the senate’s second district “just doesn’t work as an opportunity district that I believe that the court had in mind in terms of the numbers”.
Republicans hope to showcase the issues of compactness and unified communities in court. They’re hoping a second round of litigation, or even another trip to the supreme court, will let them avoid creating giving a second of Alabama’s seven congressional districts to a Democrat.
Bullock and Crayton were skeptical the high court would immediately backtrack on its ruling and said federal courts discount compactness and preserving communities in redistricting.
“It can’t take a front seat to matters that are entrenched in federal law,” Crayton said, calling those arguments “silly”.
Bullock said an appeal might not make it back to the supreme court in time for the 2024 election, and it could be that Republicans anticipate losing the case but won’t vote for a plan that sacrifices a sitting Republican congressman.
“Another interpretation would be they couldn’t bring themselves to do in one of their friends,” Bullock said. “Let somebody else take the blame. Let the courts take the blame.”
English (US)