Supreme Court weighs whether Alabama’s congressional map violates law

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in June in a case that could result in Alabama redrawing its seven Congressional districts and could affect other states in how the Voting Rights Act is applied.

Individual voters and organizations filed the lawsuit in 2021, challenging the district map approved by the Alabama Legislature after the 2020 census. The plaintiffs alleged that the map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), which prohibits election laws and procedures that are racially discriminatory. A key contention was that Black residents make up 27% of Alabama’s population, but only one of the seven Congressional districts, or 14%, had a majority Black population.

A panel of three judges held a seven-day hearing last year and ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. They ordered the Legislature to redraw the map with a second district that had a majority Black or near majority Black district before the 2022 elections. The U.S. Supreme Court put a hold on the ruling at the request of Alabama election officials, who argued, in part, that it came too late for last year’s elections. That allowed the map to stay in place last year. But the justices’ decision on whether the plan violates the Voting Rights Act is pending. Lawyers for both sides argued before the Supreme Court in October.

Evan Milligan, executive director of the organization Alabama Forward and a lead plaintiff, said the Voting Rights Act, passed by Congress in 1965, was weakened by the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in another Alabama case, Shelby County v. Holder. The Shelby County decision ended the requirement for Alabama and other states with a history of racial discrimination on voting to seek preclearance from the Justice Department on election law changes. Milligan said the decision in the current case, called Allen (for Secretary of State Wes Allen) v. Milligan, will determine the viability of the VRA in stopping discrimination in the coming years.

“If the court rules in our favor it will affirm some of the existing protections that we have on the books,” Milligan said. “These are certainly protections that many feel need to be stronger. But it would recognize what that minimum, what that ground level floor is. Now if we lose, you’re looking at what departing from that floor looks like. It’s going to be either one extreme or the other.”

Alabama’s district map has had six majority white districts and one majority Black district since 1992, when a federal court ordered the state to draw a majority Black district. Alabama had an all-white Congressional delegation from 1877 to 1992. Since 1992, the state has had six white representatives and one Black representative in the U.S. House.

Lawyers representing state officials and defending the current map have argued that it is similar to those adopted after the census in 2000 and the census in 2010, which were both precleared by the Justice Department. The state’s lawyers said the Legislature drew the current map with race-neutral criteria, making changes to adjust to the population shifts needed after the 2020 census. They argued that the three-judge panel that ruled in favor of the plaintiffs made a legal error in their interpretation of the VRA, saying that to draw a second majority Black district would require “race-based sorting,” or putting race ahead of all other considerations.

“The three-judge court’s view of the VRA makes VRA compliance irreconcilable with the U.S. Constitution,” lawyers for the state wrote. “A map that starts with a ‘non-negotiable’ racial target of two majority-black districts and that can be drawn only when race is ‘prioritized,’ goes far beyond Section 2′s mandate of an ‘equally open’ political process.’”

“Nothing in Section 2 grants Plaintiffs a right to a predetermined number of majority-minority districts that can exist only when race subordinates ‘traditional districting principles,’” lawyers for the state wrote.

Milligan said the three-judge panel’s ruling came after the plaintiffs presented a strong case that met key criteria set by Supreme Court precedents.

“Don’t take my word for it,” Milligan said. “Read the lower court’s opinion. There were three judges on that panel. Two were appointed by President Trump. They ruled unanimously that we overwhelmingly established that the state had violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act according to these tests that the court has created and Congress as well.”

The three-judge panel included U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus and District Judges Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer. Marcus was appointed by President Clinton in the 1990s, while Manasco and Moorer were appointed by President Trump.

“Based on the findings of fact and conclusions of law explained below, including our assessments of the credibility of expert witnesses, we conclude that the Milligan plaintiffs are substantially likely to establish that the Plan violates Section Two of the Voting Rights Act,” they wrote last year. “More particularly, we conclude that the Milligan plaintiffs are substantially likely to establish each part of the controlling Supreme Court test.”

Those factors included establishing that the Black population is large and geographically compact enough to constitute a reasonably configured second majority Black district, and that voting in the challenged districts is intensely racially polarized.

“Under the totality of the circumstances, including the factors that the Supreme Court has instructed us to consider, Black voters have less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the judges wrote.

Besides Milligan, other plaintiffs include Shalela Dowdy, Letetia Jackson, Khadidah Stone, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP.

You can see the case documents here.