The plaintiffs who won their arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court that Alabama’s congressional district map most likely violated the Voting Rights Act said the new plan passed by the Legislature does not stop the dilution of Black voters.

The group led by Evan Milligan of Montgomery filed a motion Friday night asking a three-judge federal district court to reject the Legislature’s new plan, known as SB5 (Senate Bill 5), which the Republican majority in the Legislature passed over opposition from Democrats last week.

The Republican lawmakers who sponsored SB5 said it followed the court’s instructions that a remedy for the likely Voting Rights Act violation “is either an additional majority-Black congressional district, or an additional district in which Black voters otherwise have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.”

The map leaves District 7 in west Alabama as the only majority Black district out of seven in a state where one-fourth of the residents are Black. The sponsors said the map creates a second opportunity district for Black voters in District 2 in southeast Alabama, where the Black voting age population was increased from 30% to 40%.

But the Milligan plaintiffs, in their motion filed Friday night, said in the redrawn District 2 Black Democratic candidates received fewer votes than white Republicans in all 11 head-to-head election matchups since 2014, with an average margin of more than 10 percentage points. In seven elections held in 2018 and 2020, the Black-preferred candidate, Democrats, lost all seven by an average of 6.8 percentage points, the state’s own analysis said.

“In this regard, the new CD2 offers no more opportunity than did the old CD2,” the Milligan plaintiffs wrote. “In both plans, Black voters are unable to elect their preferred candidates. SB5 continues to violate this Court’s order because nothing about the new CD2 meaningfully increases Black voters’ electoral opportunities, nor decreases the dilution of their vote.”

The Milligan plaintiffs are Black voters in districts 1, 2, and 7, and two organizations — Greater Birmingham Ministries and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP. They are represented by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other attorneys.

Another set of plaintiffs, led by Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, filed their objection Thursday night.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the case on Friday. The statement, filed by Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights for the DOJ, and U.S. Attorney Prim Escalona of the Northern District of Alabama, urged the court to consider election result patterns such as those cited by the Milligan plaintiffs to determine whether the redrawn District 2 gives Black voters a realistic chance to elect a candidate of their choice.

Lawyers representing the state and defending the plan are scheduled to file their response with the three-judge court by August. 4. The court has scheduled a hearing to start August 14.

The court is preparing to hire a cartographer to draw a new map if it rules against the Legislature’s plan. The new map will be used in next year’s congressional elections.

Alabama has had one Black majority district out of seven since 1992, when a federal court drew a new map, resulting in the state electing its first Black member to Congress in more than a century. The map has not changed much since 1992, and the state has had one Black Democrat and six white Republicans in Congress ever since.

The current litigation started after the Legislature passed a plan in 2021, as required after every census.

The three-judge district court held a seven-day hearing and ruled in January 2022 that the map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act because it packed Black voters into District 7 and split the rest among other district in a way that diluted their influence.

In June, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, affirmed the three-judge court’s ruling in June and sent the case back. The three-judge court gave the Legislature the opportunity to draw a new map to fix the problem.

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