The Alabama Attorney General’s Office plans to go to the U.S. Supreme Court a third time in an ongoing lawsuit over Alabama’s congressional districts.
The office filed notice of an intent to appeal Friday. Late Monday, the office and plaintiffs who successfully challenged a 2021 state congressional map said in a court filing they had failed to reach an agreement in the ongoing lawsuit.
While the state has indicated it will stick with a court-drawn congressional map that includes two districts with majority or near-majority populations of Black voters, the state and the plaintiffs disagreed on whether the court should oversee any future problems or challenges related to congressional redistricting after the 2030 Census.
“What we’ve always requested with respect to preclearance is that Alabama be put under preclearance for congressional maps through the post-2030 redistricting cycle, and that’s to confirm that there’s no backsliding after 2030 with any new district lines that get drawn,” said Deuel Ross, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund representing the plaintiffs, in a phone interview Tuesday.
A three-judge panel in the U.S. Northern District of Alabama, which includes two judges appointed by President Donald Trump, has repeatedly ruled the 2021 congressional map approved by the Alabama Legislature violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by failing to give Black Alabamians a meaningful opportunity to elect their preferred leaders. The panel has cited racial polarization of voting in the state — where white Alabamians tend to support Republicans and Black Alabamians tend to support Democrats — in ordering the state to draw districts that give Black Alabamians the ability to substantially participate in the process.