Three federal judges, Stanley Marcus, Anna M. Manasco and Terry F. Moorer, in a federal district court in Alabama have ordered the state in this election use a districting plan that allocated two districts to black majorities in a race-based ideology, in apparent defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court order that those black-majority districts violate the Constitution.
The judges imposed their agenda on the state, ordering officials to use a districting plan with allocates two of the state’s seven districts to blacks, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled just days ago in a Louisiana case that should never happen as it’s not allowed under the Constitution.
The judges claimed that their order, instructing the use of race-based districts, actually provides “an opportunity to vote under districting plans untainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”
“We are duty-bound to preliminarily enjoin the Secretary from conducting any 2026 congressional elections” under a plan adopted by the legislature that did not include two race-based districts.
“We further order the Secretary to administer all remaining events comprising Alabama’s 2026 elections according to the Special Master’s race-blind plan.”
Politico said the court’s move would favor Democrats in that it would prevent the Republican Party from picking up an additional seat in the state this year, as is happening already in other states following a redistricting war as well as decisions in states to follow the Supreme Court’s ruling.
After the Supreme Court’s Louisiana ruling, Alabama reverted to an earlier map that had previously been blocked for not having enough race-based districts.
The fight almost certainly will advance in the federal court system, as the Supreme Court just days ago allowed Alabama to move forward with its redistricting plan.
A report at the Gateway Pundit turned blunt:
“A panel of leftist judges decided to snub the United States Supreme Court and throw out a perfectly constitutional redistricting map today. As the Associated Press reported, a three-judge panel in Alabama’s redistricting case issued a preliminary injunction barring the state from switching maps. It requires Alabama to continue using the 5-2 racially gerrymandered map the court ordered for congressional elections in 2024. The state had recently voted to reinstate its old map, which was 6-1 Republican.”
The report noted, “This is after the Supreme Court SPECIFICALLY ruled that racial gerrymandering was unconstitutional.”
The Louisiana decision, with circumstances like those in Alabama, had triggered leftist justice Sonia Sotomayor.
She fumed, against a majority that decided against allowing racism in elections, “The Court today unceremoniously discards the District Court’s meticulously documented and supported discriminatory-intent finding and careful remedial order without any sound basis for doing so and without regard for the confusion that will surely ensue. As with all vacaturs of this kind from this Court, the District Court remains free on remand to decide for itself whether Callais has any bearing on its Fourteenth Amendment analysis or if its prior reasoning is unaffected by that decision.”
The judges said, of a plan that did not include two race-based districts designated specifically because of the number of black residents, “We cannot understand the 2023 plan as anything other than intentionally discriminatory.”
The judges demanded that black residents of the state must have an “opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.”
