“The law requires the creation of an additional district that affords Black Alabamians, like everyone else, a fair and reasonable opportunity to elect candidates of their choice,” the panel wrote. The judges added that the Legislature’s proposal “plainly fails to do so.”
In asking the Supreme Court to intervene, Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, acknowledged that the Legislature had not added a second majority-Black district to its map as dictated by the federal court, but said its new map still complied with the law.
Unless the court acted, he wrote, “the state will have no meaningful opportunity to appeal before the 2023 plan is replaced by a court-drawn map that no state could constitutionally enact.”
In their brief, the plaintiffs, including a group of Black voters and advocacy organizations, urged the justices to reject Alabama’s request for relief and said the state had “unabashedly” sought to defy the courts using “recycled arguments.”
After the Supreme Court’s decision in June, the plaintiffs wrote, Alabama’s Legislature had drawn its plan in secret, with no opportunity for public comment, and had enacted it “over alternative plans that were supported by Black Alabamians.”
“Disagreement with this court’s ruling is not a valid reason to defy it — and certainly not a basis for a grant of an emergency stay application,” they wrote.
