New congressional districts for Alabama: SCOTUS rules on race v. geography

Score a win in Alabama for the Voting Rights Act. Last week, Alabama finally received confirmation that its congressional districts will need to be redrawn. This comes after the current districts were found to dilute the voting strength of Black Alabamians, in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA).

In its opinion in Allen v. Milligan, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings and affirmed 40 years of precedent, finding that Alabama needs to draw a second Black-opportunity district to satisfy the VRA. In these new districts, Alabama will be able to draw two Black-opportunity districts while simultaneously outperforming the current plan on all the usual criteria.

The current districts have been criticized for cracking the state's “Black Belt” across multiple districts. As a result, only one of the seven districts (14 percent) has a Black majority. This is even though 27 percent of the state checked the “Black or African American” box on their 2020 census form. Consequently, Black Alabamians have had less opportunity to elect candidates of choice than their numbers would suggest.

After the districts were enacted in 2022, plaintiffs immediately sued, seeking a second Black-opportunity district (though not necessarily with a Black majority). To bring such a case, plaintiffs are first required to draw alternative districting plans to demonstrate that what they are seeking is possible. Indeed, redistricting experts drew “reasonably configured” plans in which two districts had a Black majority. These demonstration districts satisfied traditional districting principles (e.g., equal populations, contiguity, compactness, preserving political subdivisions like counties and cities) as well or better than the enacted plan.

Despite this, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (and later Wes Allen) complained to the courts that drawing a second Black-opportunity district would force the state to prioritize race over traditional districting principles. Lower courts disagreed, finding that the case was not even “close.” On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts, and rejected Alabama's attempt to change the Court's precedent on the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The districts will need to be redrawn for the 2024 elections.

Mathematician and districting expert Moon Duchin, as one of the expert witnesses in Milligan, has already shown that it is compatible with traditional districting principles to draw two Black-majority districts. In fact, her districts from Milliganwere already 12 percent more compact than the enacted plan (in terms of the popular Polsby-Popper score) while splitting counties a total of six times---just like the current plan. She also drew several other demonstration districts that were slightly more compact, but at the cost of dividing more counties across districts.

In fact, Alabama has a chance to have its cake and eat it too. It is possible to draw a plan that outperforms the enacted plan and the best of the demonstration districts on the usual metrics. Using optimization techniques from the field of operations research, my collaborators and I have drawn a plan that is 40% more compact than the enacted plan (and more compact than any of Duchin's plans), while achieving two Black-majority districts and preserving six county splits. Since the VRA also permits Black-opportunity districts (with less than a 50 percent numerical majority), there is even further potential for Alabama to better satisfy good government criteria in a new VRA-compliant plan.

Ultimately, it is not necessary to sacrifice traditional districting principles to achieve equal voting strength for Black Alabamians. As mapmakers have found, Alabama can have both. As the Supreme Court has ruled, Alabama will have both.

Austin Buchanan is an associate professor of industrial engineering and management at Oklahoma State University. His research focuses on solving optimization problems in networks, particularly those having connectivity or distance constraints, with applications in political redistricting. He is an active member of INFORMS, the leading international association for Operations Research and Analytics Professionals.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Alabama congressional districts: SCOTUS rules on race v. geography