Three-Judge U.S. District Court Strikes Down Alabama’s New U.S. House District Boundaries

On January 25, two federal courts in Alabama struck down the new U.S. House districts. The judges believe it is likely that the new plan violates section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, because 27% of the population of Alabama is African-American, yet the districts are drawn so as to make it extremely likely that African-Americans could only elect one of their own in one of the seven districts. The court wants the legislature to draw a new map in the next two weeks. If the legislature does not do so, a special master will be hired who will do the job.

One case is Caster v Merrill, n.d., 2:21cv-1536. It is based solely on the Voting Rights Act, not the U.S. Constitution, so it only needed a single judge. The other case, which is combined, in a sense, is Singleton v Merrill, which does have a 3-judge court. Thus there are two opinions but they repeat the same material. The Caster judge is Anna Manasco, a Trump appointee. The Singleton judges, besides her, are Judges Stanley Marcus (a Clinton appointee) and Terry Moorer (a Trump appointee). At this time the judges did not express an opinion about the constitutionality of the plan, so both cases turn on the Voting Rights Act.

The decision says that 43 attorneys participated in this case, and that the transcript is over 2,000 pages long. Here is the decision.

The decision says that candidate filing for the primary, which had been January 28, is now moved to February 11. The primary is in May. If further developments take longer than two weeks, it is conceivable that the May primary would be moved to a later date. If that happens, the petition deadline for independent candidates and new party petitions will also be later, because petitions are due on primary day.


Comments

Three-Judge U.S. District Court Strikes Down Alabama’s New U.S. House District Boundaries — 4 Comments

  1. One more perversion of 15 Amdt. (1870)

    ONLY about NOT having race, color or ex-slavery be used to disqualify being a voter– IE NEGATIVE stuff.

    NOOOO *guarantee* that ANY race, color or ex-slave candidate MUST / should get elected.

    Perversion par for the New Age course of Con Law morons – esp in SCOTUS.
    —–
    PR
    APPV
    TOTSOP

  2. Within an equal population limit per district-constituency voters should be free choose the district in which to vote for a Representative. Voters could simply affiliate with a District like they affiliate with a party. For administrative integrity the registration process, choice of district might be locked out for change thirty days or two weeks before the general Election. Voters would simply rank choice their district preferences for equal maximum numbers in each district. First registered, first choice.
    All voter district registrations public record of course.

  3. The case heard by a single judge was filed by the Elias law firm, though Marc Elias is apparently not directly involved. The reason for filing based on the VRA is to avoid a three judge panel and direct appeal to the SCOTUS. This is a bit of a subterfuge since the purpose of the VRA is to enforce the 14th and 15th amendments. An appeal through the 11th Circuit and eventually the SCOTUS will take years.

    The fact that the illustrative plans have BVAP shares of 50.0% strongly suggest subordination to race. The plans appear to require another district to cross Mobile Bay. An expert who drew the district disingenuosly noted that one could “travel” throughout the district. He must have known that this would require a boat, swimming, or walking on water.

    Another expert drew 2 million plans and could not produce one with two majority BVAP districts.

  4. @ D F R:

    An interesting idea.

    However, couldn’t the same thing be effectively accomplished if the entire Congressional delegation were elected at-large, with ranked choice voting?

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