{"id":274,"date":"2026-06-02T15:38:30","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T15:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=274"},"modified":"2026-06-02T15:38:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T15:38:30","slug":"alabamas-new-congressional-maps-do-the-one-thing-the-supreme-court-still-forbids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=274","title":{"rendered":"Alabama\u2019s new congressional maps do the one thing the Supreme Court still forbids"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Allen v. Milligan<\/em>, an Alabama redistricting case that is now before the Supreme Court for the third time, is a face-palm, wrapped in a head-desk, wrapped in some of the most incompetent legislative draftsmanship that has ever been presented to the justices. If Alabama Republicans have any sense, they will fire all of their lawyers.<\/p>\n

Read more Why young men are killing their sperm<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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About a month ago, the Supreme Court decided Louisiana v. Callais<\/em>, gutting the federal Voting Rights Act\u2019s safeguards against legislative maps that lock voters of color out of power in the process. Callais<\/em> effectively repealed a 1982 amendment to the VRA, which prohibited many state laws that have a negative impact of nonwhite voters, even if those laws were not drawn with racist intent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After Callais<\/em>, a plaintiff challenging a state\u2019s legislative maps on racial grounds may only prevail \u201cwhen the circumstances give rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As a practical matter, this is a very difficult bar for voting rights plaintiffs to overcome. Lawyers and judges are not mind readers. And state lawmakers normally aren\u2019t foolish enough to state openly that they drew a particular map in a particular way because they wanted to maximize white power and minimize the voting power of nonwhite voters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And yet, Alabama\u2019s Republican-controlled legislature managed to enact congressional redistricting legislation that openly praises the European American character of much of the state.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Allen<\/em> turns on congressional maps that the state enacted in a 2023 law, but which have never actually been used in an election. Much of the case turns on the law\u2019s disparate treatment of two regions in the state: the Gulf Coast region of Alabama, and the state\u2019s Black Belt.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While the Black Belt is actually named after the dark-colored soil in that region, it has a because many enslaved people were brought to the Black Belt prior to the Civil War. The Gulf Coast region, meanwhile, is predominantly white. As a that struck down the 2023 maps explains, those maps keep \u201cthe Gulf Coast whole,\u201d while simultaneously splitting the Black Belt in a way that shunts many of its Black voters into a majority-white district.<\/p>\n

Read more This Democratic governor won in a landslide \u2014 and is now at war with her own base<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The mere fact that Alabama cracked up the Black Belt while keeping the Gulf Coast intact does not endanger its maps, at least under Callais<\/em>. The decision is very favorable to gerrymandering, and permits states to draw maps that diminish Black representation so long as the state claims that it is doing so to dilute the votes of Democrats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But here\u2019s the rub: The 2023 law doesn\u2019t just preserve the white-majority Gulf Coast region intact; it also praises the \u201cshared culture\u201d of that region which stems \u201cfrom its French and Spanish colonial heritage.\u201d France and Spain, of course, are European countries made up predominantly of white people.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The state legislature, in other words, didn\u2019t just give the Gulf Coast more favorable treatment than it did the Black Belt. It explicitly referenced the Gulf Coast\u2019s shared European culture when it did so. That sure gives rise to a strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Will that be enough to persuade this Supreme Court to rule against Alabama\u2019s maps? Who knows? The Court\u2019s most recent gerrymandering decisions appear designed to permit states to draw whatever maps they want, without any federal judicial oversight whatsoever. And a decision in favor of Alabama\u2019s 2023 maps would also benefit the Republican Party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Six of the Supreme Court\u2019s nine seats are held by Republicans.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But, even after Callais<\/em>, one of the few things that states should not be allowed to do is draw maps for the explicit purpose of favoring European Americans, while simultaneously disfavoring African Americans. And yet Alabama\u2019s maps may not be able to clear even this very low bar.<\/p>\n

Read more Americans don\u2019t know how to fight AI. So they\u2019re fighting data centers.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

See More:<\/span><\/p>\n
    \n
  • Life<\/li>\n
  • Midterm Elections 2026<\/li>\n
  • Politics<\/li>\n
  • Race<\/li>\n
  • Supreme Court<\/li>\n
  • Voting Rights<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    How the heck did Alabama\u2019s Republican lawmakers screw this one up?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":273,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nAlabama\u2019s new congressional maps do the one thing the Supreme Court still forbids - American Living Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=274\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alabama\u2019s new congressional maps do the one thing the Supreme Court still forbids - American Living Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How the heck did Alabama\u2019s Republican lawmakers screw this one up?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/americanlivingreport.com\/?p=274\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Living Report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-02T15:38:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=274#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=274\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/7b970e3bc484fe2e26860a4380d70de8\"},\"headline\":\"Alabama\u2019s new congressional maps do the one thing the Supreme Court still forbids\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-02T15:38:30+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=274\"},\"wordCount\":698,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=274#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/7a5440448dc93ae1e9a35b2b48a83fcf.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Interesting\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=274#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=274\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/americanlivingreport.com\\\/?p=274\",\"name\":\"Alabama\u2019s new congressional maps do the one thing the Supreme Court still forbids - 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