“Disturbed”: For a second time, federal court strikes down Alabama’s congressional map

For a second time, the Republican-drawn congressional map in Alabama was rejected by a panel of federal judges on Tuesday for failing to comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. 

The three-person panel in Alabama, including two Trump-appointed judges, threw out an earlier redistricting plan approved by Republican lawmakers in the state after finding that it diluted the power of Alabama’s Black voters. That earlier ruling was held up by the conservative Supreme Court. After the 2020 census, a group of Black voters challenged the map that maintained six congressional districts with a white Republican incumbent. More than one in four residents of Alabama are Black.

“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 judges wrote Tuesday. “The 2023 plan plainly fails to do so.”

The ruling continued:

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

“What I hear you saying is that the state of Alabama deliberately disregarded our instructions,” Judge Moorer, a Trump appointee, pointedly stated. The Alabama attorney general’s office, for its part, defended the legislature’s map in the case

For the 2024 elections, the judges have assigned court-appointed experts to draw three potential maps that each include two districts where Black voters have a realistic opportunity of electing their preferred candidate. Those redistricting proposals are due to the court by the end of the month. 

Alabama’s only majority-Black district was formed two decades ago after a lawsuit.