In a significant development in Alabama, a three-judge panel has chosen a new congressional district map. This decision is a response to a lawsuit which posited that the Alabama legislature’s congressional map was racially gerrymandered.
This judgement is worth paying attention to, largely since it arrives just a few weeks after the US Supreme Court denied a petition from the state government aiming to appeal a court order prohibiting the use of racial gerrymandering in Alabama elections.
Initially, the federal court overseeing the case named a special master to gather plans and comments from the parties involved in the case, as well as from the public. Following this, three remedial plans were suggested to substitute the original, gerrymandered plan initially rejected by the court.
The court subsequently approved “Remedial Plan 3”, which it evaluated to meet all constitutional and statutory requirements. The court noted with satisfaction that Remedial Plan 3 “Completely Remedies the Vote Dilution We Found While Best Preserving the State’s Legislative Preferences Expressed Through the 2023 Plan”. The new map is now appended to the recent court order as Exhibit A.
In line with this, the court instructed the Alabama Secretary of State to conduct the state’s upcoming congressional elections in accordance with Remedial Plan 3. Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen has committed to facilitating the 2024 electoral cycle in accordance with the new, court-ordered map. Allen has assured Alabamians that future legal proceedings will determine the finality of the redistricting issue.
This noteworthy case Allen v. Milligan began in November 2021. In June, the district court forced the Alabama Secretary of State to abandon the original, racially gerrymandered map. As a result, the case made its way to the US Supreme Court, which ruled that Alabama’s proposed map likely violated Section Two of the Voting Rights Act, leading to the eventual rejection of Alabama’s appeal of a court order prohibiting elections based on gerrymandered congressional maps.