Greene County Democrat

Tag: ACLU

  • Federal court strikes down Alabama map, citing racial discrimination, defiance

    Cong. Terri Sewell and Shomari Figures

    The court ruled Alabama’s map violates the Voting Rights Act, ensuring continued use of a court-ordered map enabling two Black Congressional representatives.

    By Bill Britt, Editor-in-Chief, Alabama Political Reporters

    In a sweeping rebuke of racial gerrymandering, a federal court has struck down Alabama’s 2023 congressional map, ruling that it was enacted with “intentional racial discrimination” and violates both the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. The decision clears the way for continued use of a court-ordered map that, for the first time in state history, enabled two Black lawmakers to win seats in Congress, in November 2024.
    The ruling follows a full trial in Milligan v. Allen, where judges concluded that Alabama lawmakers not only failed to correct the unlawful dilution of Black voting strength, but deliberately defied court orders to do so. The court found that the Legislature’s actions amounted to “a strategic attempt to checkmate the injunction that ordered it.”

    Historic Breakthrough in Representation
    The remedial map adopted for the 2024 cycle — drawn by a special master appointed by the court — culminated in a historic breakthrough: Alabama voters elected two Black representatives to Congress for the first time ever. U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-AL-7, was re-elected, and U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, D-AL-2, won his seat in a newly redrawn district designed to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
    “This win is a testament to the dedication and persistence of many generations of Black Alabamians who pursued political equality at great cost,” the plaintiffs said in a joint statement, emphasizing that “we know that all Alabamians will benefit from today’s victory, just as we have benefited from the work of others.”
    The case was first filed in 2021, on behalf of Evan Milligan, Khadidah Stone, Shalela Dowdy, Letetia Jackson, Greater Birmingham Ministries and the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP. The plaintiffs were represented by the Legal Defense Fund, ACLU, ACLU of Alabama, and the Birmingham-based firm Wiggins, Childs, Pantazis, Fisher and Goldfarb.
    U.S Rep. Terri Sewell offered her own insight on the federal district court’s ruling, saying, “In yet another victory for fair representation, a federal court has once again ruled unequivocally that the State of Alabama’s 2023 congressional map illegally dilutes the power of African American voters. Despite the state’s years-long legal battle to undo our progress, this ruling ensures that Black voters in Alabama will continue to have not one but two congressional districts where we can elect a candidate of our choice. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is indeed alive and enforceable!”

    Rep. Shomari C. Figures, D-AL-02, said the ruling reinforces the importance of equitable representation for Black voters. “The court ruled that the congressional districts in the state of Alabama were drawn in a way that did not allow Black people to have fair representation. The U.S. Supreme Court has already agreed once with the earlier ruling in this case, and it is my hope that this ruling puts the issue to rest because fair representation is central to the foundation of our democracy.”
    Court Unmoved by Alabama’s “Defiance”
    In its 600-page opinion, the three-judge panel concluded that the 2023 map, like its 2021 predecessor, unlawfully diluted Black voting strength by confining Black voters to a single majority-Black district despite clear evidence that two opportunity districts were both necessary and achievable.
    “We cannot understand the 2023 Plan as anything other than an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians’ voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way,” the judges wrote. They found that Alabama’s Black population is “sufficiently numerous and geographically compact” to form two such districts, and that voting in the state remains “intensely racially polarized.”
    The court cited trial testimony in which the state’s own legal team admitted that the Legislature “may have been hoping” to force another Supreme Court review by refusing to comply. The judges rejected this maneuver, writing that “if this record is insufficient to rebut the strong presumption of legislative good faith, then we doubt that the presumption is ever rebuttable.”
    A Legacy of Resistance — and a New Chapter
    Deuel Ross, deputy director of litigation at LDF, stated that Alabama’s “unprecedented defiance of the Supreme Court and the lower court orders harkens back to the darkest days of American history.” He called the ruling “a reaffirmation of the rule of law and the importance of protecting the fundamental right to vote.”
    Laurel Hattix, senior attorney at the ACLU of Alabama, said the decision was “an overdue acknowledgment of Alabama lawmakers’ persistent attempts to shut out Black voters from the electoral process,” and added, “for decades, Black Alabamians have organized and fought for not just their voting rights, but the voting rights of all Americans.”
    Davin Rosborough, deputy director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, underscored the broader implications: “The court has once again recognized that in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act, it is essential that Alabama’s congressional map have two opportunity districts for Black voters.”
    Preclearance Request and What Comes Next
    The court permanently enjoined Secretary of State Wes Allen from using the invalidated 2023 map in future elections and ordered continued use of the remedial map through the remainder of the decade. A status conference is scheduled for May 28, 2025, to determine next steps.
    The plaintiffs have also requested that Alabama be placed back under federal “preclearance,” a provision of the Voting Rights Act that would require the state to obtain federal approval before implementing any new congressional map — a safeguard typically reserved for jurisdictions with a history of repeated violations.
    In its concluding remarks, the court warned that Alabama’s actions “fly in the face” of its own claim that it no longer needs federal oversight, writing: “We are troubled by the State’s view that even if we enter judgment for the Plaintiffs after a full trial, the State remains free to make the same checkmate move yet again — and again, and again, and again.”
    As the case now enters a new phase, the ruling stands as one of the most forceful judicial rebukes of racial discrimination in redistricting in recent memory — and a landmark moment for the future of representation in Alabama.

  • Newswire: Rep. Sewell praises House passage of the Voting Rights Advancement Act

    Washington, D.C. – On Friday, December 6, 2019 , U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (AL-07) praised the House passage of H.R. 4, her Voting Rights Advancement Act. The bill will restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by outlining a process to determine which states and localities with a recent history of voting rights violations must pre-clear election changes with the Department of Justice.
    “Voting is personal to me, not only because I represent America’s Civil Rights District—but because it was on the streets of my hometown, Selma, Alabama, that foot soldiers shed their blood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge so that all Americans—regardless of race—could vote!” Sewell said. “I am so proud that, today, the House took critical steps in addressing the Supreme Court’s Shelby decision and passed H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, to restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to its full strength.”
    The Supreme Courts’ 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling struck down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlined the qualifications needed to determine which states are required by the Justice Department to pre-clear elections changes in states with a history of voter discrimination.
    Since the Shelby decision, nearly two-dozen states have implemented restrictive voter ID laws and previously-covered states have closed or consolidated polling places, shortened early voting and imposed other measures that restrict voting.
    The Voting Rights Advancement Act (VRAA) seeks to restore the VRA by developing a process to determine which states must pre-clear election changes with the Department of Justice. It will also require a nationwide, practice-based pre-clearance of known discriminatory practices, including the creation of at-large districts, inadequate multilingual voting materials, cuts to polling places, changes that reduce the days or hours of in person voting on Sundays during the early voting period and changes to the maintenance of voter registration lists that adds a basis or institutes a new process for removal from the lists, where the jurisdiction includes racial or language minority populations above a certain percent threshold.
    Under H.R. 4, there are three ways to become a covered jurisdiction that is required to pre-clear election changes:
    States with a history of 15 or more violations at any level in the previous 25 years; or
    States with a history of 10 or more violations, if one violation occurs at the state level in the previous 25 years; or
    Political subdivisions or localities with 3 or more violations in that subdivision in the previous 25 years.
    The Voting Rights Advancement Act now heads to the Senate for consideration, where it was introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT).
    Many are now calling on the Senate to take up the measure. Rev. Dr. William Barber, the president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach and the architect of the Moral Mondays Movement in North Carolina, counts among those calling out Senate leaders.
    “The U.S. House passed legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act,” Barber stated. “If [GOP Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell refuses to take it up in the Senate, he’s confessing that he believes the GOP can’t win without voter suppression.”
    Gerrymandering, unfair voter I.D. laws, and intimidation at the polls are among the tactics being used to prevent voters of color from casting votes, stated Marcela Howell, the founder, and president of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda.
    “Passage of the Voting Rights Advancement Act by the House is a first step toward restoring our democracy. We applaud the House of Representatives for passing the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019,” Howell stated.
    “The wholesale disenfranchisement of voters threatens our democracy. Conservative lawmakers across the country are pulling out all the stops to prevent people of color – especially Black people – from exercising our right to vote,” she stated.
    Howell continued: “We didn’t march and die fighting for our right to vote only to have that right denied us in this new Jim Crow era –fueled by the racist policies of conservative state legislators and the terrible decision in Shelby v. Holder by the Supreme Court that reinforced these oppressive laws.
    “We call on Sen. Mitch McConnell to follow the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to stop the assault on voting rights by scheduling a Senate vote on the Voting Rights Advancement Act as soon as possible.
    “We encourage voters across the country to unite in resistance by holding their elected representatives accountable and, most of all, by exercising their right to vote in local, state, and federal elections.”
    The bill is supported by more than 60 national organizations, including the NAACP, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, NALEO Educational Fund, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Native American Rights Fund, League of Women Voters of the United States, AAUW, ACLU, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association, Communications Workers of America, SEIU, UAW, Democracy 21, Democracy Initiative, End Citizens United Action Fund, Sierra Club, and League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.