Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Last night I had much to say about Republicans refusing to redraw Voting Rights Act-compliant congressional districts that didn't disenfranchise Black voters in multiple states, and that SCOTUS had all but eliminated any enforcement power to remedy it.

Today, a three-judge federal panel unanimously found Alabama's GOP was violating the VRA and ordered a court-drawn map.

A panel of three federal judges on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s latest version of its congressional map, saying the state’s Republican-led legislature did not follow a court order to comply with the Voting Rights Act when it last redrew districts in July.

The judges have directed a special master and cartographer to create a remedial map.

“We do not take lightly federal intrusion into a process ordinarily reserved for the State Legislature. But we have now said twice that this Voting Rights Act case is not close,” the judges wrote in the order. “And we are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires.”

The order also says the judges were “disturbed by the evidence that the State delayed remedial proceedings but ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy.”

The U.S. Supreme Court had issued a decision in June upholding the panel’s earlier ruling, which found that the Alabama legislature drew congressional districts that unlawfully diluted the political power of Black residents in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. The three-judge panel had ordered the state to produce a new congressional map that included either an additional majority-Black district or a second district in which Black voters otherwise would have an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

The redrawn map was approved by the Republican-controlled Alabama legislature in July. It had apportioned the state’s 7th Congressional District to include a population that is 50.65 percent Black and its 2nd Congressional District to have a population that’s 40 percent Black. The Alabama Senate voted 24-6 to pass the new plan, and the House approved the map 75-28.

Challengers argued that lowering the percentage of Black voters in the map’s sole majority-Black district and allocating a 40 percent Black voting population to another district did not meet the court’s requirement to produce a district that is “something quite close to” a Black majority.

In Tuesday’s order, the panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, Southern Division, took particular issue with the legislature’s failure to comply with a federal court order.

“We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature — faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district — responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district,” the judges wrote. “The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. The 2023 Plan plainly fails to do so.”

 

But as I said last night, "What difference does it make?" 

We know this will be appealed to the 11th circuit and overturned, or if upheld, will go to SCOTUS, and that's if Alabama Republicans don't gum up the works with another map on an appeal.

The point is, the odds of this ruling actually being carried out are nil. I've been wrong before and I hope I'm wrong here. Alabama Republicans and Republicans in a number of other states deserve to be made examples of.

We'll see how far this goes, but I'm expecting the case to be dragged out for months until the courts rule that, as with Ohio, the unconstitutional districts have to remain lest the entire state be disenfranchised.