Alabama legislators are on the clock with a week to approve a new congressional map.
The Supreme Court ruled in June the Yellowhammer state’s map, last revised in 2021, violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, specifically Section 2, which outlaws any election law or rule that discriminates based on race, color, or language.
The map that needs revising will likely see its seventh district broken up. That heavily Democratic district is the sole majority Black one despite 27% of the state’s population being Black; a third of all Black Alabamans are in that district.
Every other district elected a White Republican. Because 80% of Black voters in Alabama are Democrats, some expected the Supreme Court to view the past map as a political and not racial gerrymander, but they were proven wrong.
Lawmakers are currently stuck on four different maps, and they must come up with an answer before July 21, when the special session called by the governor to redraw the lines ends. The state’s attorney general has already called one of the proposals unconstitutional for not having a single Black-majority district.
The Republican-dominated legislature is likely going to have to weaken their party’s power. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report now marks the once solidly Republican first and second congressional districts as toss-ups, citing “the presumption that one of their seats will ultimately become a Montgomery and Mobile-based Black majority seat that comfortably elects a Democrat.”
