The United States Supreme Court, now joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, is hearing oral arguments on Oct. 4 in Merrill v. Milligan, a case that will determine if the latest Alabama congressional redistricting map violates the Voting Rights Act.
The case brought by the Alabama Secretary of State John H. Merrill is appealing a ruling from the three-judge U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
The judges ruled that the 2021 Alabama redistricting plan violates the Voting Rights Act “Because Alabama didn’t “prioritize[] race” over traditional race-neutral redistricting principles.”
Alabama State Conference of the NAACP Evan Milligan, Shalela Dowdy, Letetia Jackson, Khadidah Stone and the Greater Birmingham Ministries brought the initial case against Alabama.
“The state’s intentional policy of disempowerment and discrimination has resulted in the denial of equal opportunity for Black people to participate in the political process in violation of the U.S. Constitution and the VRA,” to a brief in Milligan v. Merrill said according to The Washington Examiner.
The Judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Alabama to redraw a map that includes, “two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it,” a distinction purely predicated on race.
At issue here: the GOP-passed Alabama map keeps Black voters packed in just one district, #AL07 (left), when it would be possible to draw *two* comfortable Black opportunity seats (hypothetical #AL06 and #AL07, right). pic.twitter.com/zQHeYvTS4w
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) January 25, 2022
Alabama’s Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall wrote in a brief to SCOTUS on Aug. 24, “The VRA Operates As A Prohibition On Voting Rules Abridging Or Denying Voting Rights ‘On Account Of Race,’ Not An Affirmative Obligation To Redistrict ‘On Account Of Race.'”
As The Washington Examiner reported, Marshall explained, “As we have explained throughout this litigation, Alabama’s 2021 plan is an ordinary plan that looks much like the plan approved by a federal court in 1992, the plan approved by a majority-Democratic legislature in 2001, and the plan approved by a majority-Republican legislature in 2011..”
The case in Alabama is just the first in a series from Washington, Texas, North Dakota, and several other states seeking to form so-called “majority-minority districts.”
These are Congressional and legislative districts concocted with the race of voters as the sole deciding factor.
It’s an affront to the very notion of racial equality.
That Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will rule in favor of what boils down to electoral segregation alongside Justices Elana Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor seems to be a foregone conclusion.
What is in question is whether the left-leaning justices will be able to sway Chief Justice John Roberts, and/or any of the three most junior ‘conservative’ judges: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney-Barrett.
