A federal court on Sept. 5 struck down the Alabama Legislature’s congressional map that was drawn in July, finding that state lawmakers failed to follow an earlier court order requiring that they adhere to the federal Voting Rights Act.
The court ordered that a special master and a cartographer would have to prepare a new, statutorily compliant map.
The 217-page order (pdf) by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama suggests state lawmakers in the Republican-controlled legislature didn’t try to comply with the court’s order that it draw an electoral map consistent with the provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
“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.
“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 decision continues:
“We are disturbed by the evidence that the State delayed remedial proceedings but ultimately did not even nurture the ambition to provide the required remedy. And we are struck by the extraordinary circumstance we face.
“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 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.”
The panel did not accept the state’s argument that drawing a second black-majority district would unconstitutionally constitute “affirmative action in redistricting.”
“Unlike affirmative action in the admissions programs the Supreme Court analyzed in Harvard, which was expressly aimed at achieving balanced racial outcomes in the makeup of the universities’ student bodies, the Voting Rights Act guarantees only ‘equality of opportunity, not a guarantee of electoral success for minority-preferred candidates of whatever race,’” the panel wrote.
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