Alabama legislators pass another discriminatory map.‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

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Alabama Legislators Flout Court Ruling and Pass a Discriminatory Map . . . Again

After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that found that Alabama’s congressional map diluted the voting power of Black Alabamians in violation of the Voting Rights Act, state legislators were required

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to pass a new map “in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.” But instead of complying with the court’s order, Alabama legislators passed a map that included only one Black-majority district and another district whose Black voting age population was only 40 percent, a level observers and experts say is far too low to give Black voters’ preferred candidates any chance of winning elections.

Black lawmakers decried the new map, with one calling it

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“a slap in the face not only to Black Alabamians but to the Supreme Court.” Kareem Crayton, an Alabama native and the Brennan Center’s senior director for voting and representation, noted

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the state legislature’s long history of defying federal court rulings. In a hearing

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over the new map last week, the three judges overseeing the case similarly questioned if Alabama blatantly ignored their order. However, even if the three-judge panel strikes down the new map, the state has signaled it will appeal any decision invalidating the new map to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping to challenge the Voting Rights Act once again. Though Crayton and others doubt

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that such an appeal would succeed, he cautions

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that the legislature’s behavior points to “a very dangerous road that I think the court has to be thinking about going forward . . . If it wants its decisions respected both by federal officials and state officials, they should take this moment seriously, and what they say and how they speak to it.”

The chart below shows just how bad Alabama’s new map is. Under the state’s invalidated 2021 map, just over 30 percent of the state’s Black voters were in a district where they were able to elect their preferred congressional candidates, but remarkably, the redrawn 2023 map provides even fewer electoral opportunities for Black voters. On the other hand, the plan proposed by the plaintiffs in Milligan would put nearly 6 in 10 Black voters in a district where they could elect their preferred candidates.



Ohioans Organize for Lasting Reforms to Combat Partisan Gerrymandering



After Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected a measure

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that would have made passing citizen-initiated constitutional amendments more difficult, democracy advocates are eyeing their next fight: passing an amendment that would finally end partisan gerrymandering in the state.

Former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican who repeatedly voted as part of the court’s majority to strike down gerrymandered maps, is leading

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an effort to get an amendment on the November 2024 ballot that would create a truly independent redistricting commission like those used in Michigan and California. Ohio voters approved redistricting reform amendments in the past decade — once for legislative maps and again for congressional maps. Yet these amendments proved insufficient in combatting partisan gerrymandering, as the Republican-dominated legislative redistricting commission lacked true independence, and the reformed congressional redistricting process similarly allowed Republican legislators to ignore mapping requirements to pass their preferred map.

O’Connor noted

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, “In retrospect, looking at those constitutional amendments, realizing who populated the commission, it was doomed to fail.” In describing the new “Citizens Not Politicians” amendment

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, which advocates submitted

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to the state attorney general earlier this month, O’Connor said

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it would “end gerrymandering by empowering citizens, not politicians, to draw fair districts using an open and independent process.”

For the proposed amendment to make the 2024 ballot, campaigners will have to gather 413,487 signatures

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from around the state.



Partisan Gerrymandering Litigation in State Courts

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Rucho v Common Cause put partisan gerrymandering claims “beyond the reach” of federal courts, voters have increasingly turned to state courts and state constitutions to challenge gerrymandering.

In the 2021 redistricting cycle, voters in 17 states have filed partisan gerrymandering claims challenging congressional and/or legislative maps. As a new Brennan Center resource

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highlights, 4 of those states have seen gerrymandered maps struck down, 4 have had cases dismissed on factual grounds, 3 have had courts find the partisan gerrymandering claims to be nonjusticiable, and 6 have pending lawsuits. “As litigation continues across the country,” author Yurij Rudensky writes, “we can soon expect a clearer picture of which voters will have recourse against partisan abuses in redistricting and whether anti-gerrymandering becomes the dominant rule under state constitutions.”



Redistricting in the News

After an intermediate appellate court ruled

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that New York’s redistricting commission must reconvene and draw a new congressional map, Republicans appealed the decision to the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. Less than two years ago, courts struck down the legislature-drawn map as a partisan gerrymander and put a map drawn by a court-appointed special master in place. When the justices hear the case in November, they will consider whether the court-ordered map was intended to last for the entire decade or simply serve as a short-term remedy.



After the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Allen v. Milligan, a federal court in Louisiana has restarted

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the process of redrawing the state’s congressional map to create a second Black congressional district. The court had ruled in June 2022 that the Voting Rights Act required a second district, but the redrawing of the map was put on hold by the Supreme Court, pending a decision in Milligan. The Louisiana court will hear arguments on a remedial map on October 3. Meanwhile, the Fifth Circuit will hear an appeal of the lower court ruling on October 6.



A federal court in Georgia will hold a trial

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starting on September 5 over whether the state’s congressional and legislative maps discriminate against Black voters in violation of the U.S. Constitution and Voting Rights Act, as three lawsuits allege.



As part of an agreement with Florida state officials, the plaintiffs challenging Florida’s congressional districts have amended

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their lawsuit to focus solely on District 5 in the northern part of the state, which they argue was redrawn to diminish Black voting power and oust Black representative Al Lawson (D). Under the agreement, Florida has stipulated that the redrawn district eliminates Black voters’ ability to elect their preferred candidate, but it argues that maintaining the pre-redistricting version of District 5 would have violated the Equal Protection Clause of the federal Constitution by requiring excessive consideration of race. A state court will hear arguments on August 24. Previously, plaintiffs also made partisan gerrymandering allegations and challenged a Tampa-area district they said also discriminated against Black voters, but these claims were dismissed under the agreement.



A group of Tennessee voters filed

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a lawsuit claiming that some of the state’s congressional and state senate districts were drawn to purposely discriminate against Black voters, in violation of the 14th and 15th Amendments. In particular, the plaintiffs argue

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that legislators improperly used the race of voters as the determining factor for where they placed district boundaries, with the intention of diluting Black voting power in the Memphis area.



You can find earlier editions of our Redistricting Roundup here

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.









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