Federal judge discusses options, sets deadline for Alabama Senate district remedy

BIRMINGHAM — A federal judge Monday laid out a contingent plan to implement a previous ruling that the Alabama State Senate map violated the Voting Rights Act.

The steps came after attorneys for Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, the defendant in the lawsuit, told U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco Monday that no decision had been made about calling a special session of the Legislature to redraw two Montgomery state senate districts Manasco ruled were in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

“It’s our understanding, they continue to talk about this. They continue to be looking at the issues, trying to make a decision. They have not done so,” Assistant Attorney General Jim Davis told Manasco.

Manasco, appointed by President Donald Trump, said Monday that if the Legislature does not adopt a remedial map in a special session, she will appoint the same team that redrew the state’s congressional districts in 2023: Richard Allen as the special master, David Ely as his cartographer, and Michael Scodro and his law firm, Mayer Brown LLP, as the special master’s legal counsel.

Neither Allen nor the plaintiffs objected to the appointment.

Davis said Monday that Oct. 1 would be the latest Ivey could call a special session to have a map adopted by Oct. 10. Manasco said she wants to put the special master to work on a contingent basis between Oct. 1 and 10 in order for a map to be fully implemented by Nov. 17. The roughly five weeks between would allow the plaintiffs and Allen to argue over the remedial map, Manasco said.

“I’m not inclined to say anything more at this time about what the Legislature would need to do to pass a remedial map, because I think the court’s previous order speaks for itself,” Manasco said.

If the special master draws the map and the Legislature does not meet, the cost of the special master would fall to the plaintiffs, Manasco said. The court could not pay the fee, and Davis said the state could not pay the fee if the map was not drawn for the use of the Legislature in a special session.

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Davin Rosborough, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the plaintiffs, said he expects the plaintiffs to be open to paying the fee. The special master billed the state $515,000 for the map he drew for the state’s congressional districts in 2023.

“My inclination is to recommend that we proceed in that way, so long as there’s sufficient clarity in what the circumstances would be in which the plaintiffs would be responsible for the costs,” Rosborough said.

Davis said he would research the legality of the state sharing the cost before Oct. 1.

Manasco ruled in August that the Montgomery area needed a second majority-minority district, or something close to it, to give Black voters an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choosing.

Should the ruling be upheld, it would be the second time in four years a federal court found Alabama’s 2021 congressional and legislative maps to be racially discriminatory. A three-judge panel that included Manasco ruled in 2022 that the state’s congressional map did not give Black voters a proper opportunity to choose their preferred leaders, eventually resulting in a new congressional map with a majority Black district in west Alabama and a near-majority Black district in the southern Black Belt.

Allen has appealed the ruling citing that a similar case in Louisiana, Callais v. Louisiana, may not require such districts.

“I have no idea what we are going to know, whether it’s more than we know today or the same things we know today, about what’s going to happen in Callais by that day,” Manasco said. “Many of these factors are beyond the control of not only this court, but everybody in the room.”

This story is from alabamareflector.com.