There’s a lot of action in courts and state capitals across the country in the fight for fair maps, so let’s dive into the latest.
Florida Litigation
The trial in a racial gerrymandering challenge to Florida’s congressional map led by Common Cause Florida, Fair Districts Now, the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, and individual co-plaintiffs started today. We are represented by the brilliant legal minds at Southern Coalition for Social Justice and Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP. Common Cause staff will be in the courtroom every day of the two-week trial to provide updates on how things are going.
Ohio continues to demonstrate why a new ballot initiative effort to empower a citizens redistricting commission is the best path forward for ending gerrymandering in the state. Ohio's politician redistricting commission drew a draft state legislative map that is somehow an even more extreme partisan gerrymander than an unconstitutional plan in use in the last election. A vote on this map could happen as early as this week.
Alabama Map Struck Down...Again
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Alabama legislators’ appeal of a trial court decision finding that those legislators illegally discriminated against the state’s Black voters in congressional redistricting. If this has Groundhog Day vibes, it’s not your imagination. The U.S. Supreme Court already upheld a trial court order requiring Alabama to create a second majority-Black congressional district in Allen v. Milligan. Somehow that wasn’t sufficiently clear to legislators who simply ignored the order when drawing a new map.
A less than thrilled three-judge panel (“[Alabama] has lost three times already, and one of those losses occurred on appeal”) in a Birmingham federal court reiterated the need for another majority-Black district. It appointed a special master to submit three new proposed maps by September 25. The trial court will now consider each of the three options the special master provided.
These disingenuous accusations were concocted to ensure that a new progressive majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court does not hear a partisan gerrymandering challenge targeting state legislative districts. In a disturbing twist, legislators are considering impeaching Justice Protasiewicz in the Assembly and then not holding a trial in the Senate so the state’s Democratic governor cannot appoint a replacement. In addition to this impeachment scheme, legislators are trying to ram through fake reform also designed to keep the Wisconsin Supreme Court from hearing the case.