In Alabama redistricting case, liberal justices embrace segregation

MOBILE, Alabama — In the Alabama redistricting case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court docket on Oct. 4, the liberal justices made false assertions in apparent search of misguided conclusions that may balkanize this Alabama county alongside racial traces.

That is absurd. The court docket ought to wholeheartedly approve the congressional district traces that Alabama adopted after the 2020 census, which might maintain Cellular County complete.

SUPREME COURT’S ALABAMA REDISTRICTING CASE WILL TEST JUSTICE JACKSON’S INFLUENCE

For many years, Alabama has had seven seats in Congress. For many years, one among Alabama’s seven districts has had a black majority. Plaintiffs difficult Alabama’s districts say that as a result of 27% of the state’s inhabitants — not fairly two-sevenths — is black, the state ought to be pressured to create a second black-majority district. However that inhabitants share has solely barely modified in all of the intervening years, as federal courts have repeatedly discovered Alabama’s districts completely constitutional. The brand new districts drawn by the state legislature are fairly just like these outdated districts that handed constitutional muster. Widespread sense says if nearly nothing has modified, then what was constitutional earlier than stays constitutional now.

Plaintiffs base their calls for for a second black-majority district on Part 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which ensures equal entry to the political system for black voters. Sadly, they mistake “entry” for racial “outcomes.”

To clarify its objective is entry and never outcomes, Part 2 says, “Nothing on this part establishes a proper to have members of a protected class elected in numbers equal to their proportion within the inhabitants.” That assertion is obvious and direct. In a collection of rulings, the Supreme Court docket repeatedly has dominated that race completely might not be the “predominant” think about drawing district traces.

But plaintiffs demand that race be the important issue, ignoring different impartial and judicially authorised components reminiscent of geographical options or county borders. To concoct a second district with a black majority, plaintiffs create traces that obliterate these conventional and smart components, meandering throughout the panorama whereas cherry-picking black communities to append to the brand new district whereas excluding instantly neighboring white ones.

Cellular County, within the state’s southwest nook, has all through current reminiscence been the anchor, in complete, of the state’s 1st Congressional District. Plaintiffs need a gerrymander that snakes down in a weird option to gobble up black neighborhoods in Cellular and power them into a distinct congressional district, together with black areas from all the best way throughout the state. Their thesis, solely racialist and arguably racist, is that black Alabamans in a coastal county adjoining Mississippi have extra in widespread with landlocked black Alabamans close to Georgia than they’ve with their white coastal neighbors simply three streets away from themselves.

At oral argument, the excessive court docket’s liberal justices, led by Elena Kagan, appeared to be fishing for some form of justification to help this argument that race ought to trump different issues. However Kagan has her info incorrect. As if caught within the Sixties, Kagan stated, “You’re taking a look at a state the place … there’s unimaginable racially polarized voting.”

Effectively, not precisely. In 2021, the town of Cellular, for the fifth consecutive election, selected a mayor of a distinct race than the town’s voting majority. In 2005 and 2009, when the town nonetheless had a considerable white majority, it elected black Democrat Sam Jones over white Republican candidates. By 2013, the town had change into majority-black, however in 2013, 2017, and 2021, it elected white Republican Sandy Stimpson over black Democrats.

Clearly, the one method a black man can win twice in a white-majority metropolis and a white man can win 3 times in a black-majority metropolis is that if every winner has attracted important help from voters of different races.

Likewise, in a statewide Democratic gubernatorial main in 2010, white candidate Ron Sparks decisively defeated Rep. Artur Davis, who’s black, amongst black voters. On the similar time, Davis captured near 40% of the white Democratic vote. In Cellular, Davis carried a robust majority of each black and white precincts. However Starks gained the race due to his statewide black help.

Contra Kagan, there clearly just isn’t “extremely racially polarized voting.” Later, Kagan misused the Part 2 language guaranteeing that black voters have equal participatory alternative to elect a “candidate of their selection” to imagine that it basically means “candidate of the identical race.” As proven in all these elections cited above, that’s nonsense.

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Why would a black voter within the rural “wiregrass” space of Alabama, close to Georgia, routinely “select” to be represented by a black politician from city Cellular over a white politician whose lifetime within the wiregrass area helps him perceive native issues?

By shoehorning black voters collectively solely on the premise of race, the plaintiffs really suggest to comply with George Wallace’s adage — “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation perpetually.” When a white Alabama governor uttered that horrible line, he was rightly branded a despicable racist. Do Kagan and 4 different justices need to carry Wallace’s mantle?