SCOTUS To Alabama: Redraw Your Racist Maps. Alabama To SCOTUS: F. U.

On June 8, the Supreme Court declined the state of Alabama’s invitation to gut the last remnant of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA). The invite was couched in a case called Allen v. Milligan, which challenged Section 2 of the VRA’s prohibition on “voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race.” Because the state of Alabama, which is 27 percent Black, has a seven-member delegation to the US House, of which six members are White. And they’d like to keep it that way.

In January of 2022, a three judge District Court panel, including two Trump appointees, tossed Alabama’s map, finding that the state’s Republican legislators had packed African American voters into District 7, which includes Birmingham and parts of the Black Belt, and is represented by the delegation’s lone Democrat, Rep. Terry Sewell. The rest of the state’s minority population was distributed — i.e. cracked — into majority-white districts giving them “less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” Evaluating the “totality of the circumstances,” the court concluded that this could not have happened by accident and ordered the Legislature to immediately redraw the maps “to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.”

But the Supreme Court intervened, claiming that a February deadline for the state maps was cutting it too close, a principle it has applied wholly inconsistently. Alabama was allowed yet another election cycle to run its racist maps in 2022, and once again, the delegation was six Republicans and Terry Sewell. (Plus Katie Britt and that sumbitch Tuberville in the Senate.)

Last month, however, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the Court’s three liberals in finding in favor of the map’s challengers, meaning that the Alabama Legislature had to go back and draw less racist maps.

RIGHT?

Well, you’d think!

But apparently you’d be wrong, because those assholes went right back and drew yet another 6-1 map. This graphic from FiveThirtyEight illustrates that the new map is functionally the same as the old, now-rejected one.

“This is really a slap in the face, not only to Black Alabamians, but to the Supreme Court,” Democratic state Rep. Barbara Drummond said earlier today, according to AL.com.

“I have never seen a learned group of people who will outright, without any fear of contradiction, would dare to blatantly flip off the United States Supreme Court and throw such a historical, monumental ruling in their face,” agreed Democratic state Rep. Juandalynn Givan.

But Alabama House Speaker Pro Tem Chris Pringle, a named defendant in the original suit and the sponsor of the bill codifying this map, insisted that it complied with the VRA in that it increased the Black voting age population in District 2 from 30 to 42 percent, and the bill passed the House this morning 74-27. The measure now heads to the state Senate, where it will undoubtedly be approved.

For her part, Governor Kay Ivey has made clear that she intends to support the map, sniffing that “Our Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups do.” (She’s like a septuagenarian Jason Aldean.)

The three-judge panel overseeing the process has given the state until Friday to redraw the maps in accordance with prior rulings. Look for a challenge to be filed by Monday at the latest. But if you’re looking for evidence that Alabama’s Republicans are racist scofflaws, well … look no further.

[FiveThirtyEight / AL.com]

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