WASHINGTON − Alabama officials filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court on Monday, asking the high court to once again review its controversial congressional map in a case that could have implications for both Black voting power in other states and, potentially, control of the House of Representatives after next year’s election.
The appeal came days after a federal court in Alabama struck down that state’s congressional map for not including a second majority African American district. Alabama’s map includes one of seven districts where African Americans make up a majority of voters, even though African Americans make up 27% of the state’s population.
The outcome of the case could have implications beyond Alabama as other southern states are defending their maps against challenges from voting rights groups. Those groups claim Alabama essentially ignored a Supreme Court ruling from earlier this year by redrawing its districts with only one minority-majority district.
But Alabama officials told the Supreme Court on Monday that to create a second majority African American district would require a “sacrifice” of other priorities. Without intervention from the Supreme Court, the state said, Alabama’s map would be “replaced by a court-drawn map that no state could constitutionally enact. Millions of voters will be placed into congressional districts whose design is dictated…by the race of voters.”
The Supreme Court could move relatively quickly on the emergency appeal, potentially within a matter of weeks.
The case is technically limited to Alabama but the legal battle could have significant ramifications in other states, especially in the South, and could give Democrats an advantage in next year’s election. The Alabama result will almost certainly influence similar legal battles over maps in Texas, Florida, Georgia and other states where the interplay between race, politics and redistricting has been fraught for decades.