A former chief federal judge and longtime civil rights attorney put it bluntly: The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that ordered Alabama to redraw voting maps will not be enough to make the state legislature give Black residents a fair say in who represents them in Washington.

“I have absolutely no faith that the Alabama Legislature is going to do the right thing. It never has,” said U.W. Clemon, a retired U.S. District, who was also one of the first two Black people elected to the state Senate after Reconstruction. “The legislature of course is going to do what it usually does.”

Clemon said he believes the federal court will have to intervene to ensure a fair outcome for Black voters.

As a group of state legislators met in Montgomery on Tuesday to discuss proposed new voting maps for Alabama, Clemon joined a panel of lawmakers and experts at Miles College in Fairfield to discuss the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision. Earlier this month, the justices upheld a lower court’s ruling that Alabama’s 2021 congressional voting maps diluted the power of Black voters, in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“It ensures that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is alive and well,” said U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham. “It was a historic victory not only for Alabama Black voters, but it was a historic victory for democracy as well.”

State Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, offered some optimism that her colleagues in the legislature will come to a compromise on a fair map. She said the prospect of a federal court intervening serves as an incentive.

“There still will be some people who will try to play some games,” Coleman told the audience of students and community members. “From what we’re hearing, the maps that we draw at the legislative end will have to be brought to the plaintiffs, and they can agree or disagree. None of us want the special master to come in. We want to draw the maps for ourselves, so I think that cooler heads will prevail.”

Gov. Kay Ivey has called a special legislative session on July 17 to redraw district lines.

With about a dozen maps currently under consideration, Sewell urged the state to approve the map submitted jointly by the plaintiffs who won the case at the Supreme Court.

The National Redistricting Foundation (NRF), along with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LFD), the two primary legal representatives in the case, this week submitted the latest map to the state’s reapportionment office.

The map proposes a second majority Black district would be in District Two, which when redrawn would span the southern portion of the state from east to west, adding Monroe and Washington counties and portions of Mobile and Clarke counties.

District Two by Rep. Barry Moore, R-Enterprise. District Seven is currently Sewell’s district.

“An opportunity district is a district with more than 50 percent,” Sewell said, referring to the percentage of Black voting age populations. “There is no opportunity at 48 percent. There is no opportunity at 43, or 38, so those maps that have that need to go.”

While each speaker presented different perspectives on how to draw maps and how the process will take place, each agreed there was no time to celebrate.

Clemon drew parallels between the recent Supreme Court ruling and the landmark 1954 Brown v Board of Education case that desegregated public schools.

Sewell said the ruling in the Alabama maps case could affect governments around the country.

“All eyes are on Alabama and we’re going to set the pace,” Sewell said, citing voting rights cases in Louisiana and North Carolina. “We have to be vigilant and make sure your representatives know how important it is to get it right. It’s about fair representation.”

The panel, presented by college president Bobbie Knight and the Miles College Center for Economic & Social Justice, was moderated by Barnett Wright, executive editor of The Birmingham Times.