Federal judges to discuss Alabama’s congressional map after Supreme Court ruling

Federal judges to discuss Alabama’s congressional map after Supreme Court ruling

The three-judge panel of judges overseeing a lawsuit over Alabama’s congressional map have scheduled a status conference for Friday, after the U.S. Supreme Court sided with their initial ruling that the maps may violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The June 9 order from U.S. Circuit Court Judge Stanley Marcus and U.S. District Judges Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer called for a meeting at 8 a.m. on June 16.

The Alabama Legislature approved new congressional maps at the end of 2021 that preserved the 7th Congressional District, stretching from Birmingham to the western Black Belt, as the state’s single majority-minority district. Democratic legislators and voting rights activists sued over the map, arguing it packed Black voters into a single district, locking Black voters living outside it of any meaningful participation in the political process.

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In January 2022, the panel ruled that the state’s congressional map discriminated against Black voters and said the remedy appeared to be a second district where “Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.” The Alabama Attorney General’s Office appealed the ruling, and the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the lower court order in February 2022. It heard the case, now known as Allen v. Milligan, last October.

In a 5-4 decision last week, the court upheld the lower court ruling. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, rejected arguments from the state defending what it called a “race-neutral” approach, writing that the panel had properly followed precedents and prior jurisprudence on the Voting Rights Act.

“A district is not equally open … when minority voters face—unlike their majority peers—bloc voting along racial lines, arising against the backdrop of substantial racial discrimination within the State, that renders a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority voter,” Roberts wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court formally lifted its February 2022 stay on Monday.

U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1997. U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump in 2020. U.S. District Judge Terry Moorer was nominated by Trump in 2018.