One of the actually correct, legal, and constitutional Supreme Court decisions handed down last month was the determination that Alabama's gerrymander was so racist that it actually violated the Voting Rights Act that Chief Justice Roberts has spent more than a decade gutting. Alabama Republicans of course don't give a damn, and are simply submitting a 99% as racist gerrymander eliminating Black voting power in the state and daring anyone to do anything about it.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, seemed to defend the legislature’s insolence in the face of the federal courts’ orders when it approved the new map Friday.
“The Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups,” she said in a statement.
CNN’s Dianne Gallagher noted in her report that the old congressional map was invalidated by a three-judge federal district court panel that included two judges nominated to the bench by former President Donald Trump.
They concluded the plan by which Alabamians selected their congressional delegation in 2022 likely violated the Voting Rights Act because Black voters have “less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress.”
Before the 2022 midterm election, the US Supreme Court had tabled action on Alabama’s map, which helped Republicans win the barely there four-seat House majority they currently hold.
Gallagher and CNN’s Tierney Sneed wrote last month that the Allen v. Milligan decision could have consequences for other states and reignite a series of lawsuits in multiple states.
“Outright defiance of the Supreme Court’s order,” is how Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, described the new map to CNN’s Dana Bash Monday.
In this moment, it is up to our federal courts to protect Black voters and also to protect their own authority here,” she later added.
The background here is that Alabama’s population is about 27% Black, but the Black population in the state is focused on a number of counties that are overwhelmingly African American – an area known as the state’s Black Belt, although it is named for the area’s fertile soil. The interest of giving the voters of the Black Belt, many of whom are Black, representation in Congress, is all over the Supreme Court’s decision.
Coincidentally, earlier this year, President Joe Biden named Alabama’s Black Belt, site of many key moments in the Civil Rights Movement, as a National Heritage Area.
o Nelson, the math suggests that since Black Alabamians represent about a quarter of the state’s population, they should get representation from more than one of the seven lawmakers representing Alabama in Congress.
But the issue is larger than simple math since Alabama, both historically and currently, is marked by polarized voting conditions.
“This is a mandate by civil rights laws to make sure that there’s fairness in our systems, that Black voters and other voters who have been historically discriminated against have an opportunity to have representatives who will speak to their interests and give voice to their concerns,” she said.
Alabama's solution is a near majority Black congressional district that Republicans will win by just 20 points instead of 40. The state will still have six Republicans in the US House and one Democrat, but of course now it's more fair!
Like Ohio Republicans, who ran out the clock on gerrymandering until a federal judge ordered the state to allow voting with districts that are unconstitutional under state law, Alabama will just do the same. Republicans don't care. They will control the state forever and will change the rules to assure they always will.
No matter how many Black voters they have to permanently disenfranchise.
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