Surprise! Alabama must draw a second VRA district

[I’m not Stu]

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-1086_1co6.pdf

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

Keep dooming EMR64man! You seem to jinx the actual result lol

[Del Tachi]

Courts again prove they're terrible at redistricting.  Splitting Mobile is unconscionable. 

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

That has pretty far reaching consequences. This probably means that Louisiana, South Carolina, and others will need to go back to the drawing board. And RIP to NCGOP trying to really gerrymander their state, that’s gonna be hamstrung here too.

Had this ruling been given  2 years ago, Dems would probably hold the house right now.

[Jay 🏳️‍⚧️]

As far as this case is concerned, LA (a related case, Ardoin v. Robinson, concerning Louisiana was held pending the result of this case) and AL must draw a second African-American opportunity district, but it opens up federal litigation all across the nation regarding the VRA. I'd say its more likely than not a suit in FL succeeds too, given the dismantling of FL-5.

One case I'd be interested in seeing is if someone sues the Arkansas maps, which would be a test case for how far states must go in giving minority voters opportunity districts. You can very easily draw a district that gives black voters an opportuity to elect the candidate of their choice.

I think you can pretty soundly argue that you don't need to do this in a state that's only 16.5% black, but it would be an interesting case to test the boundaries.

[Skill and Chance]

That has pretty far reaching consequences. This probably means that Louisiana, South Carolina, and others will need to go back to the drawing board. And RIP to NCGOP trying to really gerrymander their state, that’s gonna be hamstrung here too.

Had this ruling been given  2 years ago, Dems would probably hold the house right now.

IDK, doesn't this also have implications for Maryland that would likely make a northern/western seat go GOP again in addition to the eastern one?

[Skill and Chance]

On a different note, this should quash concerns that Reynolds v. Sims is in any danger. 

[Del Tachi]

One case I'd be interested in seeing is if someone sues the Arkansas maps, which would be a test case for how far states must go in giving minority voters opportunity districts. You can very easily draw a district that gives black voters an opportuity to elect the candidate of their choice.

Arkansas may not cross the Gingles threshold.  Your district is only 36.5% Black, whereas the Gingles requires a compact majority-minority (>50%) district to be possible. 

Assumedly, SCOTUS thinks two majority-Black districts are reasonable in Alabama.  I disagree, because adding another VRA district requires other trade-offs (like splitting Mobile) which make the map worse overall.  Race should not be considered before other traditional redistricting criteria. 

[Vosem]

That has pretty far reaching consequences. This probably means that Louisiana, South Carolina, and others will need to go back to the drawing board. And RIP to NCGOP trying to really gerrymander their state, that’s gonna be hamstrung here too.

Had this ruling been given  2 years ago, Dems would probably hold the house right now.

IDK, doesn't this also have implications for Maryland that would likely make a northern/western seat go GOP again in addition to the eastern one?

Maybe. This is a fairly narrow ruling which reads the exact text of Gingles, which demands that it be possible to create a compact district where a particular minority group is a majority of the electorate, and to demonstrate that there is enough bloc voting such that they would not otherwise get their preferred candidate. (Maryland currently has two black-majority seats. It's maybe possible to draw a third 'compact' one, eyeballing it; I'm not sure. The seat itself would be compact, but it would force extremely bizarre lines on all the other seats; if anything it would be likelier to bring about a new GOP-winnable seat in the east, rather than doing anything to the Panhandle).

(The most obvious advantage for the GOP if this is the first of a line of cases comes in Michigan state legislatorial maps, where much of heavily African-American Detroit was unpacked and multiple primaries saw the preferred candidates of black Americans losing. There might be a similar argument for drawing more packed Hispanic-majority seats in the Nevada legislature).

Also, if primaries do count -- which they probably do -- then this creates a weird set of incentives for white Democrats to vote for the preferred candidates of minority communities, since that makes it less likely a court system will force a majority-minority pack that would disadvantage Democrats across the rest of the map.

The case doesn't directly address Louisiana (except that further proceedings will need to be consistent with the decision), and the Louisiana stay was 6-3, where the Alabama one was 5-4. It may come down to the Court's opinion of what "reasonably compact" means, or the opinion of a lower court. (My totally-wild guess is that South Carolina might be likelier to get another black seat than Louisiana; it's in the much more liberal Fourth Circuit and I think those maps are cleaner). All of these states have the same issue as Alabama (yes, you can draw another compact black seat, but this forces the creation of a very weird non-compact coastal white seat). Maryland is sort of the same. The Court deciding to interpret things super-aggressively feels unlikely to me and the ultimate national impact is unclear, but I think this decision probably promotes a second black seat in both SC and LA in addition to AL. However, I can see them leaving this sort of thing to circuit courts, and the Fifth might be likelier to read this in a way that would not require a second black seat in LA.

I'd say its more likely than not a suit in FL succeeds too, given the dismantling of FL-5.

FL-5 wasn't majority-black in its Jacksonville-to-Tallahassee configuration. I think you can get it to majority-black in a snaky Jacksonville-to-Orlando configuration, but that has been struck down in the past as a racial gerrymander. I think FL seems mostly fine; if anything the most questionable part of that map is the black Everglades seat, but that one suits local Republicans and local Democrats just fine and it's unlikely to go away.

One case I'd be interested in seeing is if someone sues the Arkansas maps, which would be a test case for how far states must go in giving minority voters opportunity districts. You can very easily draw a district that gives black voters an opportuity to elect the candidate of their choice.

I think you can pretty soundly argue that you don't need to do this in a state that's only 16.5% black, but it would be an interesting case to test the boundaries.

This isn't about "opportunity" seats. It's about needing to draw a seat which is majority-minority where it's possible to do so in a way that's compact if that is necessary for that minority to elect the candidates of its choice. (Note that this creates possible paradoxes: I'm not sure whether or not it's possible to draw a compact Hispanic-majority House seat in Vegas, but I think it's pretty close, something around 48-52%. And, indeed, the candidate of the Hispanic community often loses Democratic primaries for the other House seats in NV. But the consequence of this would be making the three other seats pretty Republican. I don't think this would ever be interpreted in a way that forces the party a minority prefers to lose its chance of controlling a state legislature, just because that's absurd, but given that NV only elects 4/435 members of the House I wonder if the Court wouldn't be tempted to throw out the argument about the other 3 seats).

I don't believe it's possible to draw a House seat in Arkansas which is black-majority. Therefore, this case does not apply to Arkansas congressional maps (though it may be very significant for the Arkansas legislature).

That has pretty far reaching consequences. This probably means that Louisiana, South Carolina, and others will need to go back to the drawing board. And RIP to NCGOP trying to really gerrymander their state, that’s gonna be hamstrung here too.

NC-1 is not majority-black and attempts to make it majority-black have been struck down by the state Supreme Court as an impermissible racial gerrymander (and they require very weird lines with lots of tentacles no one would call compact). I'm uncertain whether it's possible to draw a majority-black seat in Charlotte (...it's very close either way; possibly it's necessary to string you out to Greensboro, which has also been ruled impermissible), but if it is, this ruling may force a Democratic pack there. Some Republican plans from 2 years ago did crack Charlotte but, well, that would've been an obvious dummymander the Court stopping them from doing that is just doing them a favor.

Had this ruling been given  2 years ago, Dems would probably hold the house right now.

Had this ruling been 2 years ago, I think Democrats would have ~3 more seats right now (one in AL, one in SC, perhaps a net of one extra seat somewhere else). More interesting is the question of what might've happened if this ruling had been 15 years ago and a set of cases had followed from it -- I wonder if Republicans might not be stronger in Midwestern state legislatures. (Also, possible wildcard of forcing a Hispanic-majority Vegas pack?)

~~

Returning to broader politics, I think this case has two lessons. The first is that the Court may delay doing something for many years, until an appropriate case makes its way up, but that does not mean that it approves of the status quo or would refuse a change when the correct case comes up; this ruling could've been made (would've fit the zeitgeist more and the facts were the same) in 2011, or perhaps even 2001 (...though at that time there was less racial polarization). Just because it wasn't doesn't make it impossible.

Secondly, I wonder if there's an element of negotiation/realism in politics to publishing this case right before a very likely affirmative-action strike-down. It's very hard to say that the Court is always hackish, or always racist, immediately after a ruling like this.

[Smash255]

That has pretty far reaching consequences. This probably means that Louisiana, South Carolina, and others will need to go back to the drawing board. And RIP to NCGOP trying to really gerrymander their state, that’s gonna be hamstrung here too.

Had this ruling been given  2 years ago, Dems would probably hold the house right now.

IDK, doesn't this also have implications for Maryland that would likely make a northern/western seat go GOP again in addition to the eastern one?

No, Maryland wasn't a racial gerrymandering issue.  On top of that Frederick County has swung D enough that it wouldn't matter anyway.  At best for the GOP a clean Maryland map is probably 6-1-1 at this point.

[Ferguson97]

One case I'd be interested in seeing is if someone sues the Arkansas maps, which would be a test case for how far states must go in giving minority voters opportunity districts. You can very easily draw a district that gives black voters an opportuity to elect the candidate of their choice.

Arkansas may not cross the Gingles threshold.  Your district is only 36.5% Black, whereas the Gingles requires a compact majority-minority (>50%) district to be possible. 

Assumedly, SCOTUS thinks two majority-Black districts are reasonable in Alabama.  I disagree, because adding another VRA district requires other trade-offs (like splitting Mobile) which make the map worse overall.  Race should not be considered before other traditional redistricting criteria. 

Why do you believe splitting Mobile is worse than having just 1 Black district?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The problem with the Maryland point is that almost all black voters in Maryland and almost all notable black communities (essentially all except a few enclaves on the Eastern Shore) are represented by a preferred candidate of the black community. This is getting back to that old misconception that the VRA requires majority-minority seats or the especially bad one that it mandates those hideous tentacle driven ones to do so (although of course that argument isn't being pushed here by anyone because it's based only around hypothetical compact districts), it's simply to avoid discrimination against traditionally discriminated communities in voting. If there was a case of a clearly black-supported primary challenger (and remember, this does not simply mean "black person") against a white incumbent in Maryland who kept failing there might be a case there, and it's certainly possible in theory to draw a map that is a D gerrymander yet discriminates against black voters in the primary, as some bad faith Republican hacks love to accuse Democrats of doing (krazen was notorious for this), but coming up with an actual proven example based on hard evidence* is much easier said than done, and I've never heard of such a map being struck down in court. It's a pretty big stretch to argue that the current Maryland map qualifies for the above reasons.

*The closest thing is probably the old Texas map drawn by the Dixiecrat-dominated legislature in the 90s and kept mostly intact by a court, but this was repealed by Tom DeLay's pushed for mid-decade redistricting, not a court decision.

[Vosem]

The problem with the Maryland point is that almost all black voters in Maryland and almost all notable black communities (essentially all except a few enclaves on the Eastern Shore) are represented by a preferred candidate of the black community. This is getting back to that old misconception that the VRA requires majority-minority seats or the especially bad one that it mandates those hideous tentacle driven ones to do so (although of course that argument isn't being pushed here by anyone because it's based only around hypothetical compact districts), it's simply to avoid discrimination against traditionally discriminated communities in voting. If there was a case of a clearly black-supported primary challenger (and remember, this does not simply mean "black person") against a white incumbent in Maryland who kept failing there might be a case there, and it's certainly possible in theory to draw a map that is a D gerrymander yet discriminates against black voters in the primary, as some bad faith Republican hacks love to accuse Democrats of doing (krazen was notorious for this), but coming up with an actual proven example based on hard evidence* is much easier said than done, and I've never heard of such a map being struck down in court. It's a pretty big stretch to argue that the current Maryland map qualifies for the above reasons.

*The closest thing is probably the old Texas map drawn by the Dixiecrat-dominated legislature in the 90s and kept mostly intact by a court, but this was repealed by Tom DeLay's pushed for mid-decade redistricting, not a court decision.

I think the current Michigan state Senate map might do the trick -- it drew a bunch of black-plurality seats in areas where black-majority seats are possible, and candidates supported by the black community proceeded to lose a bunch of primaries in 2022. But that's pretty unusual and I don't think there are any cases pending. (It is not a Democratic gerrymander but instead tries to promote proportionality, and I think a side effect of this in Michigan is maps in which the black community is disfavored in Democratic primaries).

I think Maryland has to pass through a number of hurdles -- you'd have to demonstrate that it's possible at all to draw three compact black-majority seats, rather than just two, and then you'd have to demonstrate an election in one of those areas where the black community didn't get its choice of candidate (hasn't happened in a while). Given that I think 'compact' is going to be held to a pretty high standard (my suspicion is either LA or SC probably won't get a second black seat), this seems really unlikely to happen. (But it's fun to think through the consequences of this ruling actually being, like, super-revolutionary and causing lots of maps to shift; my practical suspicion is that it'll end up being a smaller deal than it "should" be because of restrictive circuit-court-level interpretations).

I think in many places in the Southwest it is possible to draw compact Hispanic-majority House seats and the Hispanic community often doesn't get its choice of candidate in the Democratic primary. (In some of these places, like Dallas, turnout is so low that it's questionable whether this is even possible). If it is possible to draw a Hispanic-majority seat in Vegas (...and if it isn't now, it probably will be down the road just given fertility differences), then I think it may be necessary to draw one which would elect a candidate of that community's choice, which would cause the rest of the map to be fairly Republican-favorable (although not ridiculously so, even then).

The weird thing about this ruling is that it is, on the face of it, quite narrow! (As I pointed out in the other thread, saying that districts are protected only where it is possible to draw a compact seat where a particular minority is a majority is actually pretty restrictive and leaves things like the DeSantismander totally in the clear, and I think it would leave North Carolina's 11-3 maps in the clear. But consistently enforcing that would mean adding a second black seat to AL, SC, and LA. And honestly perhaps MS. And it might mean adding a second rural black seat to GA. But once you move outside the Deep South the rule quickly becomes very loose -- it's questionable whether it applies to NC at all, for instance, and probably only means 'Charlotte gets a black seat', which was never not going to be the case.)

[Del Tachi]

One case I'd be interested in seeing is if someone sues the Arkansas maps, which would be a test case for how far states must go in giving minority voters opportunity districts. You can very easily draw a district that gives black voters an opportuity to elect the candidate of their choice.

Arkansas may not cross the Gingles threshold.  Your district is only 36.5% Black, whereas the Gingles requires a compact majority-minority (>50%) district to be possible. 

Assumedly, SCOTUS thinks two majority-Black districts are reasonable in Alabama.  I disagree, because adding another VRA district requires other trade-offs (like splitting Mobile) which make the map worse overall.  Race should not be considered before other traditional redistricting criteria. 

Why do you believe splitting Mobile is worse than having just 1 Black district?

The first prong of Gingles isn't even satisfied in this case.  A second majority-Black district isn't "reasonably compact" if it requires Mobile to be split.  The Alabama Gulf Coast is a clear community of interest, so much so that the Alabama Legislature has kept AL-01 mostly unchanged since the 1970s.  The four alternate maps presented to the district court each split Mobile County and scored lower on traditional measures of compactness than the map adopted by the Legislature. 

Even if the Gingles preconditions were met, that doesn't in itself mean there is a VRA violation (i.e., the 1982 Senate factors.)  The spirit of Section 2 (and Gingles) is that race not be the predominant factor in redistricting.  This precludes redistricting to disenfranchise minority communities, but it also precludes the uncritical maximization of majority-majority seats that eschew traditional redistricting criteria.       
 

[Vosem]

I believe the same happened in SC-01. Right now, Republicans control 6 of our 7 congressional districts despite South Carolina being a 55/45 state. I hope SC-01 can be competitive once he district is redrawn.

This only affects Alabama, but all future redistricting cases, everywhere, will need to be consistent with the rules. There is a South Carolina decision at trial court, but it was stayed pending a Supreme Court review, which will likely happen next year.

There are still multiple different appeals waiting to happen in Louisiana, and that case might not reach SCOTUS for many years.

Nowhere else are there cases pending, although basically everywhere redistricting processes will at least try to conform to these rules. Here's a map of where they apply, in respect to African-American communities (no Hispanics or Asians) for the House of Representatives:

Blank: impossible to draw black-majority seat
Green: possible to draw at least 1 black-majority seat (...in CA I may have been generous); unclear if any are compact enough to be protected
Red: possible to draw at least 1 black-majority seat; all possibly protected communities have obvious performing seats
Pink: possible to draw at least 1 black-majority seat; some protected communities have non-obvious performing seats (this is, in all cases, Safe D seats in places where the primary winner is not necessarily the same person as the most popular candidate among black voters)
Light blue: possible to draw at least 1 black-majority seat; some possibly protected communities do not have performing seats. In GA and MS this is a real stretch, in LA and SC this is more plausible
Blue: Alabama, which was ordered to create a new performing seat

Note that this is only US House. Other elections also exist.

(My guess is that North Carolina should be dark red, because Charlotte is big enough for a black seat which is "compact", while California and Ohio should be blank. Also, GA and MS are really not in the same situation as LA and SC. But this is how I see things right now.)

Arkansas may not cross the Gingles threshold.  Your district is only 36.5% Black, whereas the Gingles requires a compact majority-minority (>50%) district to be possible. 

Arkansas beyond clearly does not cross the Gingles threshold. I don't even think it's possible to draw a non-compact black-majority seat; 538 tried and failed. (In Ohio you can have one if you connect Cleveland to Akron, but lower courts did not consider this compact and I'd be very surprised if it were protected. But in Arkansas I don't believe you can have one in principle.)

[Skill and Chance]

In terms of compactness, the Baton Rouge based black majority seat in Louisiana and the 4th Atlanta/5th statewide black majority seat in Georgia look at least as compact, visually, as the 2 majority black districts in Alabama that SCOTUS has ordered.  IMO those are all but required now.  In Louisiana, it would also be a natural extension of the much earlier rulings against the Richmond-Hampton Roads seat to strike down the Baton Rouge-NOLA seat.  However, while it fits with the statewide percentages, drawing a 2nd majority black seat in SC is so convoluted that I doubt it will be required.

[Vosem]

In terms of compactness, the Baton Rouge based black majority seat in Louisiana and the 4th Atlanta/5th statewide black majority seat in Georgia look at least as compact, visually, as the 2 majority black districts in Alabama that SCOTUS has ordered.  IMO those are all but required now.  In Louisiana, it would also be a natural extension of the much earlier rulings against the Richmond-Hampton Roads seat to strike down the Baton Rouge-NOLA seat.  However, while it fits with the statewide percentages, drawing a 2nd majority black seat in SC is so convoluted that I doubt it will be required.

I kind of disagree; based on the 538 map at least South Carolina seems no more convoluted than Alabama. You would need a coastal strip district and a "North Carolina border" strip district, but the black districts themselves don't need to be particularly ridiculous. (Louisiana if anything is easier than Alabama). For 2024, the Louisiana case is moving slowly enough that there won't be a change, whereas South Carolina may well get redrawn.

(I don't think this case was clear-cut enough that any specific new seat is a certain winner, and I don't think it's a guarantee that the Supreme Court would even choose to review a Fifth Circuit decision which ruled against Louisiana getting another VRA seat.)

The fifth Georgia seat may be required if the case reaches a court, but I assume there'll be less activity there because it would be possible for the districts to be rearranged in a way that doesn't change the partisan balance, and merely screws over Democratic incumbents. Even if there is a suit, it will receive less money and time than others, and plausibly some active Democratic politicians will choose to oppose it.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So it is actually quite easy to draw three compact majority black districts in Maryland, I just did, but it won't have any partisan impact, all it really results in doing is swapping areas of the 4th and 5th around to make the 5th majority black. You can keep the 5th a district that looks like a mostly rural southern Maryland district on a map but is really a black majority Prince George's-based district. So no partisan impact or any changes needed to the 6th. Also Steny Hoyer currently is clearly the preferred candidate of the black community, and one (including possibly a black Democrat) could replace him once he retires. So no real case there.

[Vosem]

Kavanaugh's concurrence (and it was quite obviously Kavanaugh who was the fifth vote here, not Roberts) is great for elucidating the full situation. Firstly -- much like the liberals in Dobbs, who maintained that the Court needed to overturn Roe to declare Mississippi's law unconstitutional -- Alabama clearly lost the case by asking for too much and trying to get the Court to overturn Gingles, rather than trying to demonstrate how their own plan might conform with Gingles:

Second, Alabama contends that Gingles inevitably requires a proportional number of majority-minority districts, which in turn contravenes the proportionality disclaimer in §2(b) of the Voting Rights Act. 52 U. S. C. §10301(b). But Alabama’s premise is wrong. As the Court’s precedents make clear, Gingles does not mandate a proportional number of majority-minority districts. Gingles requires the creation of a majority-minority district only when, among other things, (i) a State’s redistricting map cracks or packs a large and “geographically compact” minority population and (ii) a plaintiff ’s proposed alternative map and proposed majority-minority district are “reasonably configured”—namely, by respecting compactness principles and other traditional districting criteria such as county, city, and town lines. See, e.g., Cooper v. Harris, 581 U. S. 285, 301–302 (2017); Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U. S. 146, 153–154 (1993); ante, at 10–12, 18–22.

Secondly, Kavanaugh suggests that the authorization of race-based redistricting under section 2 of the VRA, much like the 1970s-era authorization of affirmative action, is remedial, and therefore cannot extend forever. This implies that he'd be willing to sign on to an opinion suggesting that it should time out after some period of time (much like how O'Connor said in Grutter, even as she upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action, that it was unlikely affirmative action would still be constitutional in 2028), or perhaps even an argument simply striking it down because the period of time for which the remedial effects were necessary has passed. But Alabama, he laments, did not make that argument, and so he cannot consider it:

Fourth, Alabama asserts that §2, as construed by Gingles to require race-based redistricting in certain circumstances, exceeds Congress’s remedial or preventive authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. As the Court explains, the constitutional argument presented by Alabama is not persuasive in light of the Court’s precedents. See ante, at 33–34; see also City of Rome v. United States, 446 U. S. 156, 177–178 (1980). JUSTICE THOMAS notes, however, that even if Congress in 1982 could constitutionally authorize race-based redistricting under §2 for some period of time, the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future. See post, at 44–45 (dissenting opinion). But Alabama did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time.

Well then. The Court has already agreed to hear a very similar case coming out of South Carolina next year. I have to assume South Carolina will bring up this argument, given that Kavanaugh is practically yelling at them that they would succeed in doing so.

[Yoda]

I'm so pleasantly surprised by this ruling. The AL and LA(which I've been reading a lot now has to include another majority black district as well, correct me if I'm wrong) maps always particularly drove me nuts. Classic, egregious southern suppression of black political power.

I'm just hopeful that WI(fairly confident here) and OH (less confident) can get fair maps before the '24 elections. With a few new southern majority black districts, fair maps in WI and OH, and possibly a more dem favorable map in NY, I think dems have an extremely good chance of taking back the House even if republicans go wild in NC.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So looking at the Michigan State Senate I'm not seeing any real case here. In terms of notable districts that are heavily but not majority black represented by non-black Senators you have the 3rd represented by an Asian woman who her primary by a wide margin against a black opponent who openly called her racist nicknames, the 7th which is represented by a white guy but he won a heavily divided primary field which included some black opponents with a majority, the 8th which is represented by hipster Christian-esque Catholicism-rejecting apostate girlboss Mallory McMorrow who defeated a black primary opponent but by a 2:1 margin, and the 10th which is represented by some guy who is the exact opposite in aesthetic and culture and thus not my type of Democrat (he's even a Knights of Columbus member!) but he's been around forever and didn't seem to have any serious primary opposition.

Also in regards to Maryland's 5th: it's extremely easy to draw it black majority and thus I suspect that the current situation which has either a very narrow white or black plurality because it's identical down to the tenth of a percent(!) is possible per Hoyer's request to stave off any potential black primary challengers. But even if that is the case the fact that he never has any serious challenges kind of deflates any argument it disenfranchises the black community. Hoyer will likely retire soon, and when that happens there's a pretty good chance a black candidate wins the seat even in its current form, but even if one doesn't it's going to be hard to argue this is due to systemic disenfranchisement because as Maryland has closed primaries it's likely a majority black primary electorate. But regardless, making the seat black majority will not impact partisanship.

[Torie]

So looking at the Michigan State Senate I'm not seeing any real case here. In terms of notable districts that are heavily but not majority black represented by non-black Senators you have the 3rd represented by an Asian woman who her primary by a wide margin against a black opponent who openly called her racist nicknames, the 7th which is represented by a white guy but he won a heavily divided primary field which included some black opponents with a majority, the 8th which is represented by hipster Christian-esque Catholicism-rejecting apostate girlboss Mallory McMorrow who defeated a black primary opponent but by a 2:1 margin, and the 10th which is represented by some guy who is the exact opposite in aesthetic and culture and thus not my type of Democrat (he's even a Knights of Columbus member!) but he's been around forever and didn't seem to have any serious primary opposition.

Also in regards to Maryland's 5th: it's extremely easy to draw it black majority and thus I suspect that the current situation which has either a very narrow white or black plurality because it's identical down to the tenth of a percent(!) is possible per Hoyer's request to stave off any potential black primary challengers. But even if that is the case the fact that he never has any serious challenges kind of deflates any argument it disenfranchises the black community. Hoyer will likely retire soon, and when that happens there's a pretty good chance a black candidate wins the seat even in its current form, but even if one doesn't it's going to be hard to argue this is due to systemic disenfranchisement because as Maryland has closed primaries it's likely a majority black primary electorate. But regardless, making the seat black majority will not impact partisanship.

Blacks in MD already have their proportionate share of CD's (ditto GA for that matter), so the VRA is not in play in that state. Posters have tended to go wild speculating about a host of state CD maps going down the tubes based on the Allen decision, and other than perhaps LA, such speculations are not well taken in my view. The VRA as interpreted by SCOTUS is very complex with a lot of moving parts (and still does have some ambiguities around the edges), so such speculations are understandable, even if probably wrong.

[Yoda]

Bump

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/05/alabama-congressional-map/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert

“A panel of three federal judges on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s latest version of its congressional district map, saying the Republican-led legislature did not follow a court order to comply with the Voting Rights Act when it redrew districts in July,” the Washington Post reports.

The judges said in the order that 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.”

A special master to draw a new map has been appointed

[BigZuck08]

Bump

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/05/alabama-congressional-map/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert

“A panel of three federal judges on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s latest version of its congressional district map, saying the Republican-led legislature did not follow a court order to comply with the Voting Rights Act when it redrew districts in July,” the Washington Post reports.

The judges said in the order that 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.”

A special master to draw a new map has been appointed

A W for Alabama.

[Person Man]

Bump

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/05/alabama-congressional-map/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert

“A panel of three federal judges on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s latest version of its congressional district map, saying the Republican-led legislature did not follow a court order to comply with the Voting Rights Act when it redrew districts in July,” the Washington Post reports.

The judges said in the order that 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.”

A special master to draw a new map has been appointed

A W for Alabama.

OR at least the voters in that state. I will trust the appointed master above the Alabama Legislature anytime, anywhere.