A map of a GOP proposal to redraw Alabama’s congressional districts is displayed at the Alabama Statehouse in Montgomery, Ala., Tuesday, July 18, 2023.
Kim Chandler | AP
The state of Alabama asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to pause a lower-court order barring the state from using a controversial congressional district map for the 2026 midterm elections.
The order prohibited the map, which was submitted in 2023, from being used for the upcoming congressional elections in Alabama because it would dilute the votes of Black people.
The state’s request to the Supreme Court came a day after a three-judge panel in U.S. District Court in Birmingham, Ala., reiteratred a prior ruling that found that the 2023 map “intentionally discriminated based on race in violation of the Constitution.”
“We again cannot understand the 2023 Plan as anything other than intentionally discriminatory,” the decision by the panel said. Two judges on the panel were appointed by President Donald Trump.
The panel had been instructed by the Supreme Court to revisit the question of whether the maps could be used for November’s elections in light of the high court’s recent ruling in the case known as Louisiana v. Callais that found that Louisiana’s drawing of its own congressional maps was a racial gerrymander.
The panel’s decision was a victory for Democrats, who since last year have often found themselves on the defensive against Republican efforts to redraw congressional districts around the country in an effort to maintain their razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives.
Alabama, in its emergency application to the Supreme Court seeking a stay of the panel’s order, said, “A stay is warranted so that Alabama is not again precluded from using its legislatively enacted 2023 Plan based on a decision that defies Callais, manipulates the Purcell principle, and offends the Constitution’s promise of equal protection for all.”
The Purcell principle is the idea that a court should not take alter the rules for an election close to the date of that contest.
“Callais vindicates Alabama’s position on the lawfulness of the 2023 Plan, yet the district court decided in one week that Callais changed nothing,” the state said in its filing.
“Worse, the district court doubled down on its constitutional holding that finds no home in our Constitution: that Alabama intentionally discriminated by refusing to intentionally discriminate,” the state said. “The district court faulted the State for denying ‘opportunity’ to minority voters and ‘diluting’ votes without once acknowledging how Callais itself refuted the district court’s pre-Callais holding on that score.”
Alabama asked the Supreme Court to issue a decision on its request by next Monday, June 1.
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