Alabama officials appealed Tuesday to the Supreme Court, seeking intervention so they can use a congressional map awfully similar to the one said Supreme Court knocked down less than three months ago.
After the Supreme Court nixed the old map in Allen v. Milligan this June, the Alabama legislators were supposed to craft a new one that gave Black voters at least the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice in two congressional districts.
Alabama turned in a new map…with only one such district.
A federal panel of judges struck the map down Tuesday, asserting that they are “troubled” by the “extraordinary circumstance” of the legislators flatly ignoring what the court instructed them to do. With “no reason to believe” that the legislature would produce an adequate map if given another try, the judges wrote that they are assigning the map-drawing to a special master.
Alabama officials quickly appealed that decision, seemingly hoping that slightly tweaking the map would be enough to peel off one of the conservative justices who voted against it last time.
“The State appears to have charted new waters: we found no other Section Two case in which a State conceded on remedy that a plan enacted after a liability finding did not include the additional opportunity district that the court said was required,” the judges wrote.
So SC can take the case, hear arguments then rule in June it’s too close to change for '24bbut needs to be fixed for th '26 midterms.
Proper course for the SCOTUS is to decline the case. Alabama had it’s chance to make its map compliant with the VRA and failed to do so.
Unfortunately, there are probably at least four votes to grant cert, so back in front of the Supreme Court it will go.
SCOTUS doesn’t have to take the appeal and probably won’t. And the lower court ruling will remain in effect – basically securing the court-drawn map unless SCOTUS issues a stay – so this is a clear Hail Mary from the AL legislature and the rest of the white supremacist government there.
Wasn’t there an article (either here or on another liberal site about the Alabama GOP deliberately charting this course because they had “inside intell” that Kavanaugh might be open to changing his vote on appeal?
You think the State of Alabama has sufficient money to pay one of the conservative justices who voted against the map the last time to change his or her mind or are they basing this all on the daydream that racism doesn’t exist in America.