The Supreme Court should not make a twisted hodge-podge of redistricting law even worse by throwing out Alabama’s congressional map. Two pieces below explain why. (Links to full columns embedded in each headline.)
To throw out Bama’s district lines would be to make improper and, frankly, racist assumptions (Oct. 5): MOBILE, Alabama — In the Alabama redistricting case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 4, the liberal justices made false assertions in obvious search of misguided conclusions that would balkanize this Alabama county along racial lines.
This is absurd. The court should wholeheartedly approve the congressional district lines that Alabama adopted after the 2020 census, which would keep Mobile County whole.
For decades, Alabama has had seven seats in Congress. For decades, one of Alabama’s seven districts has had a black majority. Plaintiffs challenging Alabama’s districts say that because 27% of the state’s population — not quite two-sevenths — is black, the state should be forced to create a second black-majority district. But that population percentage has only barely changed in all the intervening years, as federal courts have repeatedly found Alabama’s districts perfectly constitutional. The new districts drawn by the state legislature are quite similar to those old districts that passed constitutional muster. Common sense says if almost nothing has changed, then what was constitutional before remains constitutional now…..
Even more reasons the court should not throw out Alabama’s districts (Oct. 6):
Critics challenging Alabama’s design of its congressional districts want the Supreme Court to make its legislature create a second “black-majority” district (among Alabama’s seven districts total) by breaking up coastal Mobile County in the state’s southwest corner and joining its most heavily black neighborhoods with black areas all the way over on the eastern end of the state, near Georgia.
… But as Mobile TV reporter Brendan Kirby said, “[People in those different regions of the state] read different newspapers, watch different TV channels, listen to different radio stations. They have different local issues. Their kids go to different school systems. They have different community colleges and four-year universities. The only thing they share in common is skin color.”
Well, here’s more grist for the mill, explaining how strongly the two coastal counties of Mobile and Baldwin, the entireties of which have been in the same congressional district for 40 years, identify with each other and seek common representation. Adline Clarke, a black Democrat who is a third-term state representative from Mobile (and before that, a prominent reporter for the Mobile Register newspaper), spoke up just a year ago, in September 2021, about the importance of keeping both coastal counties in one political unit…..
