MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let it keep Republican-drawn congressional lines in place as the state continues to fight a court order to create a second district where Black voters constitute a majority or close to it.
Despite losing at the Supreme Court earlier this year in the long-running redistricting case, Alabama is pursuing another appeal, hoping for a different result with the most recent GOP version of the map. Alabama asked the justices to stay a ruling issued last week by a three-judge panel that that blocked use of the latest GOP-drawn districts in upcoming elections and directed a court-appointed special master to propose new lines for the state.
The judges, in their ruling, said Alabama lawmakers deliberately defied their directive to create a second majority-Black district or something close to it.
The Alabama attorney general’s office asked justices to put the order on hold while the state appeals “so that millions of Alabama voters are not soon districted into that court-ordered racial gerrymander.”
“Race-based redistricting at the expense of traditional principles bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid,” the attorney general’s office wrote.
The Supreme Court in June upheld a three-judge panel’s finding that Alabama’s prior map — with one majority-Black district out of seven in a state that is 27% Black — likely violates the federal Voting Rights Act. The three judges said the state should have two districts where Black voters have an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates.
Alabama lawmakers in July hastily passed a new map as a remedy. However, it maintained a single majority-Black district and boosted the percentage of Black voters in another district, District 2, from about 30% to nearly 40%. The three-judge panel on chided Alabama lawmakers for flouting their instruction. The panel directed a court-appointed special master to submit three proposed new maps by Sept. 25.
The state’s request to the Supreme Court comes after the three judges refused to put their order on hold as the state appeals. The judges said state voters should not have to endure another congressional election under an “unlawful map.”
“We repeat that we are deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the Secretary readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires. And we are disturbed by the evidence that the State delayed remedial proceedings but did not even nurture the ambition to provide that required remedy,” the judges wrote Monday as they refused to stay their order.
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