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A panel of three U.S. judges in the southern state of Alabama ruled Tuesday that the state legislature for a second time discriminated against Black citizens in the way it redrew congressional district lines for the 2024 elections.
The panel said lawmakers refused to obey an edict giving Black voters a reasonable chance of choosing the winner of a second seat in Alabama's seven-member delegation in the House of Representatives.
The three-judge panel said it would now appoint a special master to redraw the congressional district lines, although the state could appeal its ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The months-long dispute is occurring in a state that had a long early 20th-century history of physical attacks on Black Americans and discrimination extending throughout the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
The Alabama Legislature at first adopted a congressional map in 2021 with only one majority-Black district, even though Black people account for 27% of the state's population. Civil rights activists in the state sued to block use of the map in next year's elections, and the three-judge panel ruled in their favor.
The federal jurists said then that the state lawmakers' map likely violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act and that the state should have two districts where Black voters have a chance to elect their preferred candidates. The state now has one Black representative in Congress, Democratic Representative Terri Sewell.
The judicial panel said the state needs to adopt a plan where Black residents are a majority or "something quite close" to it in two congressional districts.
The state government sued to block the judicial panel's ruling but lost, with the U.S. Supreme Court in June unexpectedly upholding the decision that the state-drawn map was unacceptable, a ruling that also could imperil congressional maps in other southern states.
The Supreme Court ruling could give Democrats a better chance of retaking control of the House of Representatives since most Black voters support Democratic candidates.
With the Supreme Court ruling against it, the Alabama Legislature redrew its first map, still refusing to create a second majority-Black district but changing the racial composition of one district from about 30% Black to 40%. It rejected plans that would have pushed the percentage of Black voters even closer to a majority.
In the ruling Tuesday, the judicial panel said the legislature's new plan was woefully lacking.
"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," the judges wrote.
"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."
In a hearing before their ruling, all three judges had pointedly questioned the state's solicitor general about the legislature's refusal to create a second majority-Black district, or something close to it.
"What I hear you saying is the state of Alabama deliberately chose to disregard our instructions to draw two majority-Black districts or one where minority candidates could be chosen," Judge Terry Moorer said.
The state contended that its map complied with the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court decision in the case. To further change the congressional lines, the state said, would mean violating traditional redistricting principles, such as keeping communities of interest together.
Abha Khanna, an attorney representing one group of plaintiffs in the case, argued during the hearing that Alabama chose "defiance over compliance."
"Alabama has chosen instead to thumb its nose at this court, and to thumb its nose at the nation's highest court, and to thumb its nose at its own Black citizens," Khanna said.