On July 21, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey gave two giant middle fingers to the Supreme Court.
“The Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups,” she said, as she signed off on congressional maps which defied judicial orders to craft another federal congressional district in which Black voters have the opportunity to elect their preferred candidate.
Today, a three-judge panel in the Northern District of Alabama struck back, rejecting the maps authorized by Gov. Ivey and appointing a special master to redraw the state’s congressional districts. The decision is a long time coming and will doubtless be appealed.
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In January of 2022, the panel struck down the state’s original map under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Two weeks later, the Supreme Court stayed the trial court’s order in a 5-4 ruling, with Chief Justice Roberts joining the court’s three liberals. Citing the so-called Purcell principle, the majority held that it was simply too close to the 2022 election to change the maps. The future of the VRA looked grim, but in June of this year, Justice Kavanaugh switched sides and upheld the trial court’s ruling against the state.
The trial court immediately ordered the state to revise its maps to meet the October 2023 deadline Secretary of State Wes Allen said was necessary to prepare for the 2024 election. Instead, the Republican legislature drew yet another map which guaranteed that six of the state’s seven congressional seats would go to white Republicans, despite the population being 26 percent Black and 35 percent Democratic. And then Gov. Ivey, a supposed law-and-order stalwart, told the court to go pound sand.
The map was immediately challenged, and today the court pounded back.
“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. 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,” wrote Judges Stanley Marcus, Anna Manasco, and Terry Moorer (the latter two of whom are Trump appointees), adding, “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.”
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The panel appeared gobsmacked at the open defiance by Alabama’s governor and legislature:
The State concedes that the 2023 Plan does not include an additional opportunity district. Indeed, the State has explained that its position is that notwithstanding our order and the Supreme Court’s affirmance, the Legislature was not required to include an additional opportunity district in the 2023 Plan. That concession controls this case.
And so the court once again produced hundreds of pages of evidence that Alabama deliberately and illegally uses its congressional maps to disenfranchise Black citizens, followed by a brief order appointing a special master and a cartographer to craft “an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.”
What are the odds someone in Alabama is about to get held in contempt of court?
Milligan v. Allen [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics and appears on the Opening Arguments podcast.