Alabama Lawmakers Decline to Create New Majority-Black Congressional District
Alabama Republicans pushed through a new congressional map on Friday that will test the bounds of a judicial mandate to create a second majority-Black district in the state or something “close to it,” incensing plaintiffs in the court case and Democrats who predicted the plan would never pass muster with a judicial panel charged with approving it.
A month after a surprise Supreme Court ruling that found the state’s existing map violated a landmark civil rights law by diluting the power of Black voters, the Republican supermajority in the Alabama Legislature backed a plan that would increase the share of Black voters in one of the state’s six majority-white congressional districts to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent.
The map also dropped the percentage of Black voters in the existing majority-Black district to about 51 percent from about 55 percent. In Alabama, more than one in four residents are Black.
Notably, the redrawing ensures that none of the state’s six white Republican incumbents would have to face one another in a primary to keep their seat. The proposal will have to be approved by a federal court, which will hold a hearing on it next month.
Source: The New York Times
