Legal analysts stunned as 3-judge panel enacts Sotomayor plan to block Alabama maps

A three-judge panel has blocked Alabama's effort to readjust maps to eliminate congressional districts that contain large populations of people of color, reported Politico on Tuesday.

It flies in the face of the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down part of the Voting Rights Act, which makes it more difficult to challenge redistricting based on racially biased redistricting, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) analyzed.

That didn't stop another state from stepping in on a different case.

Legal analyst Josh Gerstein believes the next and final step will be a trip to the High Court. Journalist Kirk A. Bado agreed.

In a thread about the case, former Alabama prosecutor Joyce Vance commented, "Even after Callais, a 3-judge panel (2 Trump appointees) enjoins Alabama from using 'new' maps for the midterm election because of evidence of racial discrimination. Writing in dissent from SCOTUS’ decision to speed Milligan, the Alabama gerrymandering case, into effect after Callais, Justice Sotomayor invited the panel to do exactly this."

“Alabama cannot use Callais to legitimize its pre-Callais decision to double down on the discriminatory vote dilution that we and the Supreme Court found,” the court ruled. “And it cannot use Callais to legitimize the series of specific and unusual decisions it made to entrench that dilution. If such retroactive validation strategies were available, States would be encouraged to govern themselves according to what they think federal law ought to be, not what it is.”

"This decision finds AL's 2023 map was intentionally racially discriminatory even after Callais, but the injunction expires when AL passes new districts, which is already in the works," explained New Mexico lawyer Owen Barcala.

Further, he explained, "Probably won't get decisions like this in the future because the legislators in 2022 didn't know they could just explain everything away as a partisan gerrymander. Here they expressly said they weren't trying to do a partisan gerrymander."

"Whoa! Everyone had assumed Alabama would get to go back to its old congressional map after Callais. But the lower court that originally struck down that map says, not so fast," characterized VotebeatUS managing editor Nathaniel Rakich.

"I anticipate that Alabama will appeal soon. The Supreme Court oversees the appeal and will oversee the stay motion. Given their recent work on this, I am inclined to think they grant (but never know with them)," said conservative Eric Wess.

"Darkly funny how the Supreme Court keeps telling Republicans, 'Here is the approved list of ways to disenfranchise black voters, ' and Republicans are so greedy they keep failing to pass through the extremely wide loophole the court carved out for them in the VRA," one person quipped.

Another commented, "'I wasn’t trying to knock down that building,' says Guy Who Rented A Bulldozer And Used It To Repeatedly Ram The Building."

In 2023, three federal judges in the Allen v. Milligan case struck down the maps, saying that they had blatantly discriminated against Black voters, Democracy Docket recalled.

“Try as we might, 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. “After we and the Supreme Court ruled that the 2021 Plan, with only one majority-Black district, likely had the unlawful discriminatory effect of diluting Black Alabamians’ votes, the Legislature deliberately enacted another Plan that it concedes lacks the second Black-opportunity district we said was required. This amounted to intentional racial discrimination in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection guarantee.”

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