The future leadership of Alabama’s largest county is in the hands of a federal judge who will decide whether Jefferson County commissioners gerrymandered district lines to dwarf the voting rights of Black residents.
In a five-hour hearing Wednesday Judge Madeline Haikala heard arguments from plaintiffs who say the commission’s current five-district map packs Black voters into two districts, unfairly reducing their influence elsewhere in Jefferson County. The plaintiffs want the current map tossed, new lines drawn, and a special election as early as next year.
Haikala did not rule on a motion by the county to dismiss the lawsuit or a motion by the plaintiffs to call for a special election.
“Racial gerrymanders cause serious societal harm,” said James Blackshear, voting rights lawyer and a member of the team seeking to change the commission map. Blackshear said the county lines were designed as self-serving tools to preserve the status quo. He said the map was drawn without rules or guidelines.
“It was strictly a matter of what the commissioners wanted for themselves and for their districts,” Blackshear argued.
Wednesday was the first hearing in the case and Haikala will decide whether to proceed with the trial.
Plaintiffs said the current terms for county commissioners elected in 2022 should be shortened and a special election called for 2024 at the same time voters go to the polls for the presidential primary.
“Race was a predominant factor. Race was the commission’s predominant motive,” said Brenda Wright, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “It’s a fiction to say that the commission hasn’t done anything here.”
Wright also said the commission worked to maintain its plan for a race-based standard in its map and did so without public scrutiny with just one public hearing on the process.
“Those were pretty well baked before the public ever saw them,” she said.
On the county side, attorney Taylor Meehan defended the maps as a continuation of lines that were drawn as the result of a 1986 consent decree.
Meehan said plaintiffs must prove that race was the criteria when the commission drew the lines.
“The question is what the intent was,” she said. “That’s the standard; was race considered?”
It was not, she said.
“There’s a difference in having a district in place because the commission likes it and keeping a district in place because of race,” said Meehan, whose Chicago-based firm, Consovoy McCarthy, was hired by the county for the defense team.
The latest map iteration, Meehan said, included minor adjustments needed to make district populations even and other changes for the convenience of voters.
Meehan asked the judge to toss out the case. But even if she does not, the county wants her to deny the request for a special election.
Teams of lawyers on both sides lined the front row during the day-long hearing.
The impact of the case could reshape Jefferson County’s leadership. The current five-member commission is composed of three Republicans and two Democrats. The three White members are Republicans, while the two Black commissioners are Democrats.
Voting rights advocates in the case say that current maps deny Black and other minority voters the chance to select their preferred candidates for other districts.
If new lines are drawn to give Black residents more voting power, then the balance of power could swing and give Democrats a majority on the commission and the commission president’s gavel. Currently the five districts are solidly partisan on either side.
Some arguments in the Jefferson County case are similar to the Alabama case that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that state’s congressional map was unfair to Black voters.
Following Wednesday’s hearing, Birmingham attorney Richard Rice, who is part of the plaintiff’s team, said he left the courthouse with strong optimism.
“I think we have a good chance to have the preliminary injunction entered, which would allow us to have a special election,” he said.
Rice said new lines would maintain the two current majority Black districts, but would allow for a “crossover district,” that would be politically competitive with a 40 to 45 percent Black population. Such a district would force commission candidates to think more broadly about policies that affect all of Jefferson County, rather than exclusively pandering to their political majority, he said.
Plaintiffs in the case include the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, Metro-Birmingham Branch of the NAACP, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and residents Cara McClure, Alexia Addoh-Kondi, Cynthia Bonner, Ja’Nelle Brown, Eric Hall, Michael Hansen, Julia Juarez, Charles Long, William Muhammad, Fred Lee Randall, Tammie Smith, and Robert Walker.