241
submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

A panel of three federal judges has struck down Alabama's latest map of congressional election districts for not following a court order to comply with the landmark Voting Rights Act.

In an order released Tuesday, the judges said they are "deeply troubled that the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the remedy we said federal law requires."

"We are not aware of any other case in which a state legislature — faced with a federal court order declaring that its electoral plan unlawfully dilutes minority votes and requiring a plan that provides an additional opportunity district — responded with a plan that the state concedes does not provide that district," said U.S. Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus, U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco and U.S. District Judge Terry Moorer. "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 2023 Plan plainly fails to do so."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] FlowVoid@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is a Congressional map. Nobody in this lawsuit is trying to flip the state legislature. They are trying to enforce the Voting Rights Act, which is about race not party affiliation.

According to the SCOTUS, the number of Black-majority Alabama districts should be proportional to the number of Blacks in Alabama. Alabama has seven Congressional districts and is roughly one quarter Black, so the goal of the lawsuit was to make sure it had two Black-majority districts in Congress. Nothing more. The other five will surely be Republican-controlled, and everyone knows that the courts cannot change that.

Other lawsuits have tried to force various maps, at the state and congressional level, to match the number of Democratic-leaning districts to the proportion of Democrats in the state. Any such efforts have no support from the SCOTUS and no chance of success in Alabama.

this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
241 points (98.4% liked)

News

23223 readers
3250 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS