The Alabama Supreme Court on Friday permitted the Alabama the Judicial Resources Allocation Commission (JRAC) to reallocate a Jefferson County judge seat to Madison County.

The court dismissed a complaint filed on behalf of Tiara Young Hudson by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama (ACLU-AL) in which they alleged the seat Hudson won last May on Jefferson County’s 10th Judicial Circuit had been unconstitutionally reallocated to Madison County.

As a result of the Alabama Supreme Court’s dismissal Hudson will lose her seat to Madison County District Judge Patrick Tuten who was appointed by Gov. Kay Ivey last June following the reallocation of the seat.

In the JRAC’S decision for what has been their first ever reallocation since their establishment by the state legislature in 2017, they cited a caseload study that showed Madison County needed more judges and Jefferson County had a surplus as justification for transferring the seat.

In an SPLC press release this week Hudson said she was “disappointed” in the court’s decision.

“I’m disappointed to be denied consideration for the seat I won a primary election for, but I’m even more disappointed that Jefferson County residents will be denied their right to an elected judge,” Hudson said through the release.

“The decision to allow commissions to redistribute judicial seats without legislative approval diminishes the voice of a diverse community in choosing which judges will serve them.”

As AL.com’s Mike Cason previously reported Hudson moved to file a legal complaint the day after Tuten’s appointment. In the complaint Hudson challenged the constitutionality of the JRAC’s transfer of the vacant judgeship.

Hudson and the ACLU have previously said the vacancy should be filled according to the process set forth in the Alabama Constitution: the Jefferson County Judicial Commission (JCJC) nominates three candidates, and the governor chooses one for appointment according to Cason.

The complaint also noted that the transfer took a judgeship away from a county with a high percentage of Black residents and moved it to a majority white county.

“It’s no coincidence that the Alabama Judicial Resources Allocation Commission weaponized it’s unconstitutional authority to steal a judgeship based in a diverse community and send it to a white community,” Ahmed Soussi, voting rights staff attorney with SPLC said in a press release at the time.

“Through this litigation SPLC will work to ensure that Jefferson County is fairly represented in the judiciary, and that their courts have adequate resources to address the needs of the community.”

Following Friday’s decision representatives for the ACLU continued to question whether the move was constitutional.

“The Alabama Supreme Court’s decision leaves in place a judgeship that lacks the proper constitutional authority to adjudicate cases in Madison County and strips the Jefferson County courts of a judgeship that it is supposed to retain under Alabama law,” said Tish Gotell Faulks, Legal Director of the ACLU of Alabama.

“Alabamians need and deserve clarity about how judicial resources are to be distributed so that every jurisdiction has the judges needed to reduce the statewide backlog of cases.”

In the Alabama Supreme Court’s decision, they said that Hudson’s complaint “expressly sought relief concerning whether Judge Tuten lawfully holds or exercises his judicial office” and said they determined that he does.

The decision goes on to say that they cannot address “at this time… whether Hudson could pursue a stand-alone declaratory-judgment action against the Commission addressing only the Act’s constitutionality.”

In their decision the court also expressed that they believed Hudson’s case had been too heavily focused on race.

“It appears that Hudson spends so much time focusing on race — her own race, the races of JRAC’s members, and the racial demographics of Jefferson and Madison Counties — to insinuate that JRAC’s decision to reallocate the Jefferson County judgeship to Madison County was motivated by bigotry rather than by objective consideration of the factors…,” reads a special concurrence from Alabama Supreme Court Justice Jay Mitchell.

“…One unfortunate consequence of the recent trend toward lawyer driven litigation is that it tends to elevate ideological signaling over substantive legal arguments. This case is an example. The legal disputes here are about subject-matter jurisdiction and nondelegation principles; they have nothing to do with race, sex, or professions of gender identity.

“Yet repeated references to these latter characteristics are made throughout Hudson’s filings in this case, for no apparent reason other than to make an ideological point. I caution attorneys practicing in our courts not to repeat these tactics in future cases.”