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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The invisible line dividing two of Alabama’s congressional districts slices through Montgomery, near iconic sites from the civil rights movement as well as ones more personal to Evan Milligan.
There’s the
house where his grandfather loaded people into his station wagon and drove them
to their jobs during the Montgomery Bus Boycott as Black residents spurned city
buses to protest segregation. It’s the same home where his mother lived as a
child, just yards from a whites-only park and zoo she was not allowed to enter.
The spot
downtown where Rosa Parks was arrested, igniting the boycott, sits on one side
of the dividing line while the church pastored by the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr., who led the protests, sits on the other.
The lines
are at the center of a high-stakes redistricting case bearing Milligan’s name
that will go before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, setting up a new test of
the Voting Rights Act and the role of race in drawing congressional boundaries.
At the
center of the case is a challenge by various groups arguing that the state
violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black
voters when it failed to create a second district in which they make up a
majority, or close to it. African Americans account for about 27% of the
state’s population but are the majority in just one of the state’s seven
congressional districts.
“Our congressional map is not reflective of
the population that lives in Alabama,” said Milligan, 41, one of several voters
who joined interest groups in filing the lawsuit.
The case the
Supreme Court will take up Tuesday centers on whether congressional districts
in Alabama were drawn to reduce the political influence of Black voters, but
it’s also part of a much broader problem that undermines representative
government in the U.S. Both major political parties have practiced
gerrymandering — drawing congressional and state legislative boundaries to
cement their hold on power — but Republicans have been in control of the
process in far more states since after the 2010 elections. That has allowed
them to win an outsized share of statehouse and U.S. House seats and means GOP
policies — including on abortion restrictions — often don’t reflect the will of
most voters.
An
Associated Press analysis from 2017 showed that Alabama had one of the most
gerrymandered congressional maps in the country.
Republicans
dominate elected office in Alabama and are in charge of redistricting. They
have been resistant to creating a second district with a Democratic-leaning
Black majority that could send another Democrat to Congress.
A
three-judge panel that included two appointees of President Donald Trump ruled
unanimously in January that the Alabama Legislature likely violated the Voting
Rights Act with the map. “Black voters have less opportunity than other
Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress,” the panel said.
The judges
ordered state lawmakers to draw new lines for this year’s election and create a
second district where Black voters either made up a majority or near majority
of the population. But on a 5-4 vote in February, the Supreme Court sided with
Alabama to allow this year’s congressional elections to take place without
adding a second predominantly Black district. Two justices suggested it was too
close to spring primaries to make a change.
The lawsuit
claims the Alabama congressional map dilutes the voting strength of Black
residents by packing a large number of them into a single district — the 7th,
where 55% of voters are Black — while fragmenting other communities. That
includes the state’s Black Belt region and the city of Montgomery.
The current
districts leave the vast majority of Black voters with no realistic chance to
elect their preferred congressional candidates anywhere outside the 7th district,
the lawsuit contends.
“This is just
about getting Black voters, finally, in Alabama the opportunity to elect their
candidates of choice. It’s not necessarily guaranteeing that they will have
their candidate elected,” said Deuel Ross, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal
Defense and Educational Fund, which is representing the plaintiffs.
The groups
contend that the state’s Black population is large enough and geographically
compact enough to create a second district. Milligan, who is six generations
removed from enslaved ancestors who lived in the Black Belt, ticked off the
consequences for Black residents who are not able to have representation that
aligns with their needs: addressing generational poverty, the lack of adequate
internet service, Medicaid expansion and the desire for a broader array of
health care services.
“In choosing
not to do that, you’re denying the people of the Black Belt the opportunity to
elect an additional person that can really go to the mat on their interests,”
said Ross, who is one of the attorneys who will argue the case in a challenge
backed by the Biden administration.
African
Americans served in Alabama’s congressional delegation following the Civil War
in the period known as Reconstruction. They did not return until 1993, a year
after the courts ordered the state to reconfigure the 7th Congressional
District into a majority-Black one, which has since been held by a succession
of Black Democrats. That 1992 map remains the basis for the one in use today.
“Under
numerous court challenges, the courts have approved this basic plan. All we did
is adjust it for population deviation,” said state Rep. Chris Pringle, a
Republican and chairman of the legislative committee that drew the new lines.
Alabama
argued in court filings that the state’s Black population is too spread out to
be able to create a second majority district without abandoning core
redistricting principles such as keeping districts compact and keeping
communities of interest together. Drawing such a district, the state argued,
would require mapping acrobatics, such as connecting coastal areas in southwest
Alabama to peanut farms in the east.
In a
statement to The Associated Press, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said
the map is “based on race-neutral redistricting principles that were approved
by a bipartisan group of legislators.” He said it looks similar to three prior
maps, including one cleared by the Justice Department and another enacted in
the 2000s by “the Democrat-controlled Legislature.”
“The Voting Rights
Act does not force states to sort voters based on race,” Marshall said in a
statement. “The VRA is meant to prohibit racial gerrymanders, not require
them.”
Standing in
a meeting room at the Alabama Statehouse and pointing to a poster-size version
of the map, Pringle said lawmakers prioritized a race-neutral approach. The
lawsuit alleges the Republican lawmakers packed Black voters into certain
areas, but Pringle said when they were drawing lines they “turned race off” as
an option on the computer. Only later did they apply the racial data points.
“I think the Supreme Court is going to back us
up that we complied with existing law,” Pringle said.
Alabama’s
7th Congressional District snakes a winding path from the western neighborhoods
of Birmingham through the state’s Black Belt — a swath of land named for the
rich soil that once gave rise to antebellum plantations — to sections of
Montgomery.
Democratic
Rep. Terri Sewell, who has represented the district, has been the lone Democrat
among the state’s seven House members since she took office in 2011. The
state’s other six districts have reliably elected white Republicans for the
last decade.
Sewell was the
only member of Alabama’s delegation to support restoring the most effective
anti-discrimination provision of the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted in a
2013 Supreme Court decision that also arose from an Alabama case. The
provision, referred to as preclearance, forced Alabama, other states and some
counties with a history of voting discrimination to get Justice Department or
federal court approval before making any election-related changes.
Some Black
voters outside Sewell’s district say they feel their concerns are overlooked
because there is no motivation for Republican officeholders in districts that
favor the GOP to pay attention to their issues.
“Fair
representation and full representation of the voters in the state of Alabama
would mean that a third of the population should get a third of the
representation in Congress, and that at least includes one additional seat,”
Sewell said. “Look, I think that I would welcome the opportunity to have
another seat where I have a colleague that will fight for, you know, voting
rights and civil rights, that that will understand that this country has gotten
far when it comes to diversity. But we have a long ways to go.”
Alabama’s
congressional delegation voted unanimously for the CARES Act, which provided
federal aid to state and local governments during the Trump administration as
the COVID-19 outbreak was erupting across the country. But that unity vanished
when President Joe Biden took office.
Sewell was
alone in the delegation in supporting the American Rescue Plan, legislation
passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and signed by Biden. Among other
things, she said, the bill benefited community health centers and the health
care response at historically Black colleges.
One of them,
Alabama State University, was founded two years after the Civil War and in an
area where the districts divide. Sewell also was alone in supporting other
significant legislation since Biden took office — including the $1 trillion
infrastructure bill and the recent Inflation Reduction Act, which, among other
provisions, capped out-of-pocket drug costs for Medicare recipients and helped
millions of Americans afford health insurance by extending coverage subsidies.
Those types
of priorities speak to the Rev. Murphy Green, a local political activist who is
supporting the long shot bid by the Democratic candidate in the race for the
2nd Congressional District, where the Republican incumbent won with 65% of the
vote two years ago.
He
particularly pointed to the health care price controls enacted by Democrats,
including for insulin. While diabetes also is a problem for white residents, it
is especially systemic among Black people and the cost of drugs to combat it is
a priority, Green said in an interview.
“I am a
diabetic,” he said. “My congressman voted against price controls on the cost of
insulin.”
Montgomery,
which is split into two congressional districts, is a municipal version of the
state when it comes to redistricting.
From
customers at a well-known barbershop to shoppers at a convenience store, from
groups sitting in empty lots and residents in some of the neighborhoods that
are being shifted, the question of who represents them in Congress and who will
be on the ballot in November brings a range of answers.
The 2nd
Congressional District seat has been held by white Republicans for decades,
except for two years when a conservative white Democrat got a bounce from
turnout related to Democrat Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008.
Of dozens of
people approached, the majority are aware there is an Alabama case going to the
Supreme Court, but they don’t know details of the racial gerrymandering behind
the case. Some are unaware of who their congressional representative has been.
In Heritage
Barber and Style Shop, a local Black barbershop that rides the line between the
2nd and 7th congressional districts and sits across from Alabama State, Stephen
Myers, 77, talks about the state’s maps and attempts to minimize Black voting
strength.
“What’s
different?” he said.
In the
decades he has lived in his home, Myers said he has never had the opportunity
to cast a “meaningful” vote for a Democrat. Keeping people motivated under
those conditions is a challenge, he said.
The operator
of a civil rights site tour, Myers said he passed along the significance of
voting to his children and grandchildren, but motivating the current
generation? “That’s a good question,” he said.
The frustration is shared by the Rev. Benjamin Jones, who heads the St. James Missionary Baptist Church, a congregation of about 300 tucked into the former farmlands of east Montgomery County.
He recalled
the sacrifices of older generations during the civil rights movement. His
father, for example, would attend protests and marches that sometimes ended
with him going to jail, while his mother would stay home so she could bail him
out.
“So it is frustrating to know that people went
through those type things, but seemingly in 2022 there hasn’t been that much progress
in the voting arena in terms of being able to elect people,” he said. “It’s not
about someone who shares your same skin tone, but someone who at least cares
enough about your politics to be concerned about your issues.”
The strategy
to challenge a map with a safe majority-Black district comes with risks. As the
case goes before the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority,
advocates fear an adverse ruling could affect future redistricting cases.
Five
conservative justices were in the majority in the February vote blocking the
use of the map during this year’s elections. A sixth, Chief Justice John
Roberts, objected to the procedure his colleagues used to prevent the districts
from being redrawn.
But Roberts
has a long history of opposition to the Voting Rights Act and wrote the opinion
in the 2013 Supreme Court decision that dismantled part of the law.
The February
decision by the court is “a troubling sign of what may be to come,” said
Michael Li, senior counsel in the Democracy Center for the Brennan Center for Justice
at New York University.
He said
there is a real chance the Supreme Court could further gut the Voting Rights
Act and “make it all but impossible to use.”
“If the VRA
doesn’t apply in the Black Belt of Alabama, it is hard to see it applying in
many places,” Li said.
The effects
of a decision in favor of Alabama could be widespread, potentially allowing
states to dismantle or alter districts that have elected Black, Latino and other
minority candidates.
Standing by
King’s former church in downtown Montgomery, one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs
acknowledges the risk.
“I am
nervous and I’m not afraid to say that,” said 26-year-old Khadidah Stone. “I
think the nervous part is looking at what happened in the summer with Roe v.
Wade. When I’m looking at that, I look at what else is up to possibly being
attacked.”
Even if the
plaintiffs prevail, the Alabama Legislature could redraw the lines in a way
that actually could jeopardize the one majority Black, Democratic-leaning
district. Lowering the percentage of Black voters in Sewell’s district could
take an overwhelmingly safe district to one that is less so.
Hank
Sanders, a Democrat and former longtime state senator who helped draw the congressional
map Alabama put in place 20 years ago, said there is a risk that “you could end
up losing both.”
But he said
the risks have always been there in pursuing civil and voting rights. That is
especially true in Alabama and more specifically Montgomery, where memorials to
those advances coexist within sight of statues and memorials honoring the
Confederacy.
“If we
didn’t take risks and we didn’t take a chance, we’d still be in segregation
now,” he said.
Sherman
reported from Washington. Associated Press data reporter Aaron Kessler
contributed to this report.
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