Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has joined a coalition of 22 states in supporting Texas’s request for the U.S. Supreme Court to stay a federal district court ruling that blocks the use of Texas’s current congressional map. The lower court had ordered Texas to implement a different map, which would likely shift several seats to the plaintiffs’ preferred political party.
The coalition argues that the district court disregarded Supreme Court precedent and involved the federal judiciary in what they say is a process reserved for state legislatures. Last year, in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, the Supreme Court decided that plaintiffs alleging racial gerrymandering must present an alternative map showing that different districts could be drawn without changing political goals. This requirement aims to prevent partisan disputes from being presented as racial discrimination claims.
In this case, plaintiffs did not provide an alternative map but instead asked for reinstatement of a previous map favoring their party and not meeting legislative objectives. The district court granted this request, prompting Texas to appeal.
“Increasingly, political operatives are taking legal protections designed to prohibit racial discrimination and cynically using them to advance purely partisan ends,” said Attorney General Marshall. “That is why the Supreme Court’s alternative-map requirement is so important: to see if plaintiffs can show that the legislature enacted its map because of race—which the Constitution prohibits—or because of its own legitimate political goals.”
The brief contends that letting courts replace state-drawn maps without following the Alexander standard could encourage nationwide efforts to alter congressional districts through litigation rather than legislation.
Attorneys general from Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia joined Missouri and Alabama in filing the brief.
