The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

A panel of three federal judges has tossed Alabama's GOP congressional map for eliminating one of the state's two majority Black congressional districts in favor of creating another Republican district, declaring it a direct violation of the Voting Rights Act.

A three-judge federal panel late Monday blocked Alabama's new congressional district map from going into effect, ruling that challengers were "substantially likely" to prevail in their arguments that the plan violated the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

In a 225-page decision, the judges found that Black Alabamians had "less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect the candidates of their choice to Congress." The congressional map as approved preserves a nearly 30-year plan of having a single majority-minority congressional district, the 7th in west Alabama.

"Both sets of plaintiffs ... suggest, and we agree, that as a practical reality, the evidence of racially polarized voting adduced during the preliminary injunction proceedings suggests that any remedial plan will need to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it," the three-judge panel wrote in its opinion.

In a statement Monday evening, the Alabama Attorney General's Office said it "strongly disagreed" with the court's decision and would file an appeal in the coming days.

Evan Milligan, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement Monday that the map approved by the Legislature "fails Alabama's voters of color."

"We deserve to be heard in our electoral process, rather than have our votes diluted using a map that purposefully cracks and packs Black communities," the statement said. "Today, the court recognized this harm and has ordered our elected officials to do better."

The case consolidated three separate lawsuits. All three argued that the single district constituted a racial gerrymander that prevented Black voters living outside the 7th congressional district from forming alliances with like-minded white voters and electing candidates of their choice.

"Alabama’s steadfast refusal to provide Black voters with adequate representation in Congress is a product of intentional discrimination and directly linked to the state’s history and present conditions of discrimination against Black people," said the brief in Milligan v. Merrill, one of the three cases. "The state’s intentional policy of disempowerment and discrimination has resulted in the denial of equal opportunity for Black people to participate in the political process in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the VRA."

 

So the state GOP will go back to the drawing board in order to create a new map with a second Black majority district, which will almost certainly elect a Democratic candidate and a Black one at that. Even as broken and as gutted as the VRA is in the Roberts Court era, even it was enough to convince three judges to say that Alabama Republicans were harming Black voters and diluting Black voting power in the state, which tells you just how blatantly racist the map is.

 

Democrats are starting to win the overall 2022 redistricting battle, and it's a good thing. They are playing enough hardball in states like Ohio, NC, and California that Republicans aren't actually going to come out ahead as a lot of us feared they would in the House.

That's a good thing.