Supreme Court allows Alabama to use voting map favoring GOP

Summary

• Supreme Court temporarily allows Alabama 2023 congressional map
• Lower court found map discriminates against Black voters
• Three liberal justices dissent citing racial discrimination concerns
• Alabama officials argue map based on lawful policy goals

The Supreme Court on Tuesday night allowed Alabama to hold upcoming elections using a congressional map that a lower court found discriminates on the basis of race and dilutes the political power of the state’s Black voters.

The ruling, though temporary, will allow state officials to implement a 2023 redistricting map designed to give Republicans an edge in six of the state’s seven congressional districts. It includes one largely minority district – down from two – that gives Black Alabamans greater opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice.

The Supreme Court intervention comes amid a scramble by states in the South to redraw their voting maps ahead of November’s midterm elections in light of the justices’ decision in April that sharply weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The move is a win for Alabama Republicans, who postponed the state’s primaries after the landmark decision, which set new standards for considering race under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Alabama officials argued that the ruling cleared the way for the 2023 map, which had been blocked by the lower court, to be revived.

In an unsigned order issued after 9 p.m., the high court’s conservative majority said the lower court erred in its analysis, which “departed” from the principles of April’s Voting Rights Act decision. The justices said the lower court failed to “heed the presumption of legislative good faith” when it interpreted the state’s refusal to create a second largely minority district as “proof of discriminatory animus.”

The majority brushed aside the lower court’s concerns that changing maps so close to the election would cause confusion among voters.

“Its view that conducting the elections under court-imposed maps would be more convenient for the State was not a valid justification for that intervention,” the majority wrote.

The decision drew a sharp dissent from high court’s three liberal justices.

“Now the Court is squarely faced with a record of the turmoil it has caused and the harm it has wrought. Yet just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the Court today doubles down on chaos,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in an opinion, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

In a May statement, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said that the map was “based on lawful policy goals, not race” and that the state had been “punished for doing the right thing.”

The ruling follows a protracted legal battle over Alabama’s maps that has bounced back and forth between the lower court and the Supreme Court since 2021.

In June 2023, in a surprise 5-4 decision, the high court found that a congressional map the legislature had drawn a few years earlier discriminated on the basis of race. The state redrew the map, but a three-judge panel blocked the new 2023 map after it found that the state had failed to remedy the racial discrimination. That map contained only one district that would have given Black voters an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.

The panel then appointed a cartographer to create a new map with a second “opportunity” district, which led to the election of Rep. Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat. That map was in place when the Supreme Court in April ruled in the Voting Rights Act case, which involved congressional maps in Louisiana.

Granting a request by Alabama officials, the Supreme Court in May vacated the lower-court order blocking the use of the 2023 map and instructed the three-judge panel to reconsider its ruling in light of the landmark Voting Rights Act decision.

But after reconsideration, those judges found that the map favored by Republicans still “intentionally discriminated based on race in violation of the Constitution.”

The panel in the Alabama case consists of Stanley Marcus, a judge on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals appointed by President Bill Clinton; Anna M. Manasco, a judge in Alabama’s northern district appointed by Trump; and Terry F. Moorer, a judge in Alabama’s southern district appointed by Trump.

The panel also found that using that map this close to an election would confuse Alabama voters.

“The circumstances here give rise to more than a strong inference – they support our separate and independent finding that intentional discrimination occurred,” the panel wrote.

Alabama officials again appealed to the Supreme Court.

Although most political analysts think Democrats are poised to pick up enough seats to capture control of the House in November, recent efforts by Alabama Republicans to redraw congressional boundary lines could still change the dynamics of the upcoming races.

Other states in the South moved swiftly to redraw their maps after the April ruling.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) suspended his state’s House primary elections, planned for May, so legislators could pass a new congressional map. The high court then agreed to expedite the transmission of its opinion to the lower courts so that Louisiana could more rapidly redraw its maps.

Alabama’s congressional delegation consists of five White Republicans and two Black Democrats, and GOP leaders hope to redraw electoral boundaries to eliminate one or both Democratic seats. Alabama had been operating under an injunction barring it from redrawing its map before 2030 – until the Supreme Court lifted the injunction in May.

By then, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) had ordered a special legislative session to consider changes to electoral boundaries as well as new primary dates.

“SCOTUS confirmed what I have said all along,” Ivey wrote Tuesday night on the social media site X. “Today’s decision is a win for the people of Alabama and our elections. Alabama is doing our part to keep America strong, and I am proud our state continues to fight the fight. I will see y’all at the polls August 11!”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the decision would harm Black representation in Congress.

“Alabama’s political leadership has made it absolutely clear that without protections for Black voters in place, they will not stop pursuing a congressional map that results in a delegation without Black representation – even after votes to the contrary are cast and counted,” said JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist, executive director of the ACLU of Alabama, which represents plaintiffs who sought a map with two opportunity districts. “The Supreme Court may have granted Alabama’s request, but it has not changed the facts and what we know to be true.”