MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) 鈥� Alabama鈥檚 congressional map is at stake in a federal trial beginning Monday to decide if the state will keep the new court-created district that led to .
A three-judge panel will decide whether congressional lines drawn by state lawmakers diluted the voting power of Black residents. The same panel already ruled against Alabama in pre-trial decisions that the 2nd Congressional District before Rep. Shomari Figures won election in November, giving Alabama two Black representatives in its delegation for the first time in history.
Alabama is seeking to reinstate state-drawn maps. The plaintiffs hope to make the court-ordered map permanent. The trial is expected to last at least two weeks.
鈥淭his case is about representation. We have a voice right now. We were able to exercise our right to vote to achieve that. We are hoping that the court-ordered map will be able to stay in place,鈥� plaintiff Shalela Dowdy said.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Alabama will show the state-drawn map complied with the law.
鈥淭he previous hearings in this case involved only preliminary assessments on an extremely expedited timeline,鈥� Marshall said.
Marshall noted the state鈥檚 defeat of a separate legal challenge, which alleged that Alabama鈥檚 system of electing appellate judges statewide disenfranchises Black Alabamians. The state successfully argued that political party, not race, has determined who wins court races.
鈥淲e will show in the coming weeks that Alabama鈥檚 congressional redistricting plan is lawful, whether or not it favors Democrats as much as plaintiffs would prefer,鈥� Marshall said.
Since the state鈥檚 white voters overwhelmingly choose Republicans, the congressional lines have historically disadvantaged Democrats who depend on Black votes.
The long-running case began in 2021 when Black voters and civil rights groups filed lawsuits over Alabama's congressional map they said disenfranchised Black voters.
African Americans account for about 27% of the state鈥檚 population but were the majority in just one of the state鈥檚 seven congressional districts. The lawsuits accuse Alabama lawmakers of violating the Voting Rights Act 1965 by packing Black voters into a single majority-Black district and splintering other Black communities to limit their influence in other districts. Each of the seven districts represents about 14% of the state鈥檚 citizens.
The three-judge panel in 2022 , and ordered the state to create a second majority-Black district or something close it.
in 2023. that the panel said . The court instead selected a that altered the bounds southeast Alabama鈥檚 District 2, stretching it westward across the state to the Mississippi border and increasing its Black voting-age population to 48.7%.
Deuel Ross, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who represents plaintiffs, said it is disappointing that Alabama is continuing to fight the case when there is 鈥渁 map that鈥檚 already in place, a member of Congress that鈥檚 already elected.鈥�
鈥淭his sort of recalcitrance is a throwback to an earlier unfortunate era of Alabama history. It鈥檚 also, frankly, a waste of the state鈥檚 resources,鈥� Ross said.
Ross said plaintiffs believe they can show a level of continuing, intentional discrimination that should once again make Alabama subject to the preclearance requirement of the 1965 law.
鈥砊his is sort of exactly the thing that Alabama and other states did before the Voting Rights Act 鈥� a court would find that there was some sort of discrimination in the way in which they were drawing maps or registering voters and the state would respond by essentially doing the same thing over again, but dressing it up in a slightly different outfit,鈥� Ross said.
Figures said the case has been about securing fair representation.
"The preliminary rulings 鈥� including from the U.S. Supreme Court 鈥� have validated the fact that congressional districts were likely drawn in a way that did not allow for Black people in Alabama to have fair representation in Congress," Figures said.
Kim Chandler, The Associated Press
