A federal lawsuit that could determine the future political leadership of Alabama’s largest county will go to trial, a judge has ruled.
Judge Madeline Haikala this week issued her decision to allow the case to proceed. A coalition of plaintiffs say the commission’s current five-district map illegally packs Black voters into two districts, unfairly reducing their influence elsewhere in Jefferson County.
Plaintiffs argue that current Jefferson County commissioners gerrymandered district lines to dwarf the voting rights of Black residents.
The plaintiffs want the current map tossed out.
While she agreed to allow the case to proceed over the objection of the county, Haikala also denied a request by plaintiffs for a special election. Plaintiffs argued that 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.
Still, Haikala agreed that it was important for a trial to occur quickly to address lingering issues.
“A court must act promptly to eliminate racial classifications if they are proven,” she wrote in her Dec. 19 order. “Therefore, the Court will expedite the proceedings in this matter to resolve the constitutional questions presented as quickly as possible so that, if the plaintiffs prove their racial gerrymandering claims, the Court may order a remedy well before the 2026 Commission election.”
Birmingham activist Cara McClure, a plaintiff in the case, celebrated Haikala’s green light for a trial.
“The court’s decision to swiftly move forward with our case and to reject attempts at blocking our access to justice fills me with hope,” she said in a statement. “It’s crucial that the voices of every member of our community are not only heard but also genuinely reflected in Jefferson County’s redistricting.”
A status hearing is scheduled for January 11.
Some of the 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 previous congressional map was unfair to Black voters.
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.
The current five-member county commission is composed of three Republicans and two Democrats. The three white members are Republicans, while the two Black commissioners are Democrats.
New district lines could lead to a political swing that gives Democrats a majority on the dais and the commission president’s gavel. The five current districts are solidly partisan on either side. The division is largely delineated by race with Black residents voting overwhelming for Democrats and White voters favoring Republicans.
The plaintiffs claim that the commission had two other alternative maps that would have been more equitable. Instead, they argue that county leaders packed Black voters into two districts and even split municipalities to achieve this. For example, the predominately Black neighborhoods of Oxmoor and Rosedale in Homewood were taken out of the majority white District 3 and placed in the majority Black District 2.
Likewise, they argued the current map divides the city of Irondale three ways and places the section with the highest Black population in District 1 and places the other two sections in majority white Districts 4 and 5.
“Race was a predominant factor. Race was the commission’s predominant motive,” Brenda Wright, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund said during the last hearing in August. “It’s a fiction to say that the commission hasn’t done anything here.”
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 during the last hearing. “That’s the standard; was race considered?”
The latest map version, Meehan said, included minor adjustments needed to make district populations even and other changes for the convenience of voters.
Meehan said any changes could have been based on political preference, but not race.
“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.
Birmingham attorney Richard Rice, who is a member of the plaintiff’s team, has said new map 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. The new district would force commission candidates to think more broadly about policies that affect the entire county, rather than exclusively pandering to a political majority, he said.
Plaintiffs in the case include McClure, the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, Metro-Birmingham Branch of the NAACP, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and residents 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.
