Alabama redistricting law invalidated as Supreme Court worried about use of race in district lines

Democracy, elections and voting at Democracy Chronicles

From the post, “U.S. Supreme Court Invalidates Alabama’s 2011 Legislative Redistricting Plan” by Richard Winger on Ballot Access News:

On March 25, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Alabama’s current legislative redistricting plan is invalid.  Here is the decision in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v Alabama.  The decision is by Justice Stephen Breyer.  After the 2010 census, the legislature’s redistricting plan in 2011 included 8 State Senate districts with a Black majority, and 27 House districts with a Black majority (out of 35 State Senate districts and 105 House Districts).  The Legislative Black Caucus and the Alabama Democratic Conference sued, arguing that many of the Black-majority districts contained too many Black voters (many were over 70% Black).  The Black Caucus and Democratic Conference argued that a better plan would have spread them out somewhat so that Black voters would have had influence in a larger number of districts.

There are also other complicated aspects of the case, relating to Alabama’s policy of letting legislators from a particular county have decision-making power over county government for that particular county.  The groups that filed the lawsuit especially objected to the legislative redistricting plan for Jefferson County, in which the county was split into eleven different state house districts, giving each of those eleven house members power in Jefferson County government, even though many of them only represented a tiny slice of Jefferson County.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision also faults the lower court (which had upheld the districts) for denying standing to one of the groups that filed the lawsuit.  It is now somewhat likely that Alabama will hold legislative district elections in 2016.  Normally, Alabama elects all its state legislators, for both houses, to four-year terms in midterm years, and there are no legislative elections in presidential years.  UPDATE:  see this analysis of the decision by Rick Hasen.