WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court’s decision this week ordering Alabama to redraw its congressional districts was seen by many minority lawmakers and voting rights activists as a stunning victory with the potential to become a big step to get rid of the political maps that dilute the strength of the communities. colored.
Hank Sanders, a former Alabama state lawmaker who has long been politically active in the state, knew a decision was coming since the court heard arguments in the case last fall. He was not expected to be happy with the outcome, given that previous rulings by the conservative-leaning court had essentially gutted some of its most important provisions.
“I was afraid they were going to go ahead and take out Section 2,” he said, referring to the part of the Voting Rights Act at stake in the Alabama case.
He was at his law office in Selma, scene of one of the most pivotal moments of the Civil Rights Movement, on Thursday when news of the 5-4 ruling in favor of black Alabama voters broke.
“It was a surprise that made my day,” he said.
How the decision will affect similar lawsuits against political maps drawn in other states is unclear, although voting rights groups say the ruling provides firm guidance for lower courts.
The court’s majority found that Alabama concentrated black voters in one district, while distributing them among others to make it much more difficult to choose more than one candidate of their choice. The justices found that Alabama’s black population is large enough and geographically compact enough to create a second district. Only one of its seven congressional districts is majority black, in a state where more than one in four residents are black.
Similar maps have been drawn in other states, primaries for Republican-controlled legislatures.
Kareem Crayton, senior director of voting and representation at the Brennan Center, called the court’s decision “a welcome surprise” and said the challenges to the Louisiana and Georgia maps were the most similar to the Alabama case.
While considering the Alabama case, the Supreme Court had stayed a lower court decision in Louisiana allowing the creation of a majority-black second district. Now it is likely to rise. A federal judge also ruled last year that some of Georgia’s state legislative and U.S. House districts likely violated the Voting Rights Act, but had allowed the districts to be used in the 2022 election because it was too close to the election to redraw it.
The maps of the three states may have to be redrawn for the 2024 election.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said in a statement that the court’s action reaffirmed his own belief that Louisiana’s map, which was drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature, violated the law.
“As I said when I vetoed it, Louisiana’s current congressional map violates the Voting Rights Act,” he said. “Louisiana’s voting population is one-third black. We know that under the principles of the Voting Rights Act, Louisiana can have a congressional map where two of our six districts are majority black.”
Rep. Troy Carter, a black Democrat who represents Louisiana’s lone majority-black district, said the Legislature should meet immediately to draw a second majority-minority district.
“This Supreme Court ruling is a victory not only for Alabamians, but for Louisianans as well,” Carter said in an emailed statement. “We rarely get a second chance to make things right, now Louisiana can.”
In Georgia, Bishop Reginald Jackson, a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits challenging the state’s congressional map, said he was excited when he heard the news about the ruling and hopes it will advance his case.
He said he became involved in the lawsuit out of concern that the state’s black population had increased while the number of black representatives in Congress had decreased with the latest round of redistricting.
“So how could you have less black representation when you have more blacks moving into the state than before?” said Jackson, who presides over 534 African Methodist Episcopal churches in Georgia with more than 90,000 parishioners.
Alabama’s case, along with pending lawsuits in Georgia and Louisiana, means black voters will likely have the chance to choose candidates in three additional districts, said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, one of organizations that have led voting rights. challenges to the states.
He said litigation in Texas by other plaintiff groups could mean additional seats where minority voters “have an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice that don’t exist now.”
Texas state Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, a Democrat who chairs the Mexican-American legislative caucus, said the case was a “huge victory for voting rights.”
She said that after recent decisions by the current court in other areas she considers critical, such as striking down the constitutional right to abortion last year, she was concerned about the direction the justices would take with the right to vote and she was relieved to see the result on Thursday.
“As we’re seeing the Latino community increase in so many ways, we want to ensure that Latino power translates into Latino political power,” Neave Criado said.
Latinos and whites share an equal share of Texas’ population, about 40 percent each, according to 2022 census figures.
Nina Perales, vice president of litigation with the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the ruling closes the door on Texas using arguments similar to those presented by Alabama as cases move forward. Perales is leading the litigation in a similar case outside of Texas, which is based on redistricting maps created in 2021.
In addition to the Voting Rights Act challenge to Texas congressional districts, similar Section 2 claims have been filed against numerous voting districts used for state legislatures and local governments across the country.
Attorney Mark Gaber argued a case this week alleging Washington state legislative districts diluted the voting power of Hispanic residents and will argue a similar case next week involving Native Americans and state legislative districts of North Dakota. He believes Thursday’s ruling will strengthen the case.
In Alabama, the question is what happens next. Steve Marshall, the state’s Republican attorney general, said in a statement that he hopes to continue to defend the challenged map in federal court, even to a full trial.
The Rev. Murphy Green, a resident of Montgomery, said he is glad to reach the first step with the court decision.
“I was surprised, especially when I think about the makeup of the court,” he said, praising God for sending the Legislature “back to the drawing board and making it mandatory that they create a second black congressional district.”
He said the five Supreme Court justices in the majority should have looked at the state’s map and population and decided it “looked ridiculous to those justices, too.”
Rep. Terri Sewell, the only Democrat in Alabama’s congressional delegation, said she expects the case to go back to the three lower court judges who unanimously agreed that the lines drawn by the Legislature likely violated federal law. Sewell, who is black, hoped the new districts would be in place in time for the 2024 election.
Whatever the process for drawing the new lines, “they’re going to have to follow the court’s decision,” he said, noting that a redone congressional map would also mean his district would be redrawn.
“It’s a small price to pay to split my district so we can have two majority-minority districts,” he said.
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Ayanna Alexander, Associated Press reporter, in Washington; Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta; Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas; David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Mo.; and Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this report.
