Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall joined Missouri and 20 other states in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stay a federal district court ruling that preliminarily barred use of Texas’s congressional map and ordered the state to use a map that would likely reassign multiple seats to Democrats.
The state coalition argues that the lower court ignored controlling Supreme Court precedent and inserted the federal judiciary into a political process reserved for elected state legislatures.
Last year, the Supreme Court held in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP that plaintiffs alleging racial gerrymandering must provide an alternative map demonstrating that a state could draw different districts without altering its political goals. This requirement prevents political groups from disguising partisan disputes as racial discrimination claims.
In the Texas case, however, the plaintiffs did not submit any alternative map. Instead, they asked the court to reinstate a prior map that would advantage Democrats while failing to meet the goals of the state legislature. The district court granted the request, and Texas appealed to the Supreme Court.
“Increasingly, political operatives are taking legal protections designed to prohibit racial discrimination and cynically using them to advance purely partisan ends,” Marshall said. “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 argues that allowing federal courts to discard state-drawn maps without applying the Alexander standard would open the door to nationwide litigation efforts aimed at reshaping congressional districts through the courts rather than through the democratic process.
In addition to Marshall, attorneys general from the following states joined the Missouri-led filing: 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.
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email [email protected].
Don't miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.
