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Like Jack Torrance in “The Shining,” the ghost of Jim Crow keeps rearing his ugly head in Alabama as the state continues to pursue a discriminatory scheme against its Black residents.
NPR reported last week on a three-judge panel (including two Trump appointees) at a federal district court, who ruled unanimously that Alabama purposefully diluted the influence of Black voters when it refused to draw a second majority-Black district as repeatedly ordered by federal courts.
Basically, Alabama defied court orders and a ruling from the Supreme Court that required the state to draw another majority-Black district, after Republicans in the Legislature were found to have diluted Black voters’ power through redistricting after the 2020 census. The maps Alabama voted on last year were drawn by a court-appointed special master after Republicans in the state Legislature repeatedly refused to draw fair ones. And their ongoing refusal to cooperate could lead to some sort of federal monitor down the line.
The judges wrote in the ruling:
[T]ry as we might, we cannot understand the 2023 Plan as anything other than an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians’ voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way.”
The stinging critique continued:
The Legislature knew what federal law required and purposefully refused to provide it, in a strategic attempt to checkmate the injunction that ordered it. It would be remarkable — indeed, unprecedented —for us to hold that a state legislature that purposefully ignored a federal court order acted in good faith ... And it would be unthinkable for us to hold that a state legislature that purposefully took calculated steps to make a court-required remedy impossible to provide, for the purpose of entrenching minority vote dilution, acted in good faith.”
The ruling also says that at a future date, the court will consider whether to require Alabama once again to get pre-clearance from the Department of Justice for its redistricting under the Voting Rights Act.
One might wonder whether the ascension of Harmeet Dhillon — a MAGA lawyer who has overseen the evisceration of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which handles voting rights violations — could shape Alabama’s defiance on this front going forward. A significant number of the division’s employees reportedly quit rather than execute Dhillon’s perverse vision of turning civil rights enforcement into a weapon to wage Trump’s culture wars.
Redistricting is not the only front in the effort by some white Alabamians to amass more political power. Republican Gov. Kay Ivey recently approved a bill to usurp power from the water utility board in Birmingham — a majority-Black city — for herself, her lieutenant governor and the four majority-white counties that surround the city.
The Associated Press notes “proponents of the bill point to frequent rate hikes, old infrastructure and recent scandals” as a reason to strip power from the utility board. But as I’ve written, white officials have used such plans in recent years to sideline officials in largely Black communities. And Birmingham officials, including mayor Randall Woodfin, have filed a lawsuit alleging the bill “constitutes blatant racial discrimination.” (A spokesperson for the governor told the AP last week that they are reviewing the “highly unusual” suit.)
Jim Crow racism, purported by many as a thing of the past, seems to be hard at work in the Heart of Dixie.