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.
