The U.S. Department of Justice filed an amicus brief at the Supreme Court Wednesday backing Alabama in its DOJ Alabama redistricting fight, urging the justices to block a district court ruling that the federal government says defies the Supreme Court’s own recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer submitted the brief in support of Alabama’s emergency stay applications. The filing comes after a three-judge district court in the Northern District of Alabama reimposed its injunction against Alabama’s 2023 congressional map on May 26, just hours before political parties were due to submit certified candidate lists for the August 11 special primary.
The DOJ’s brief lays out three core arguments for why the district court got it wrong.
The district court ignored Callais on intentional discrimination. The Supreme Court vacated the district court’s earlier injunction on May 11 and sent the case back for reconsideration under Callais, which clarified that federal courts must disentangle race from partisanship and must presume legislatures act in good faith.
The DOJ argues the lower court “paid only lip service” to those requirements and treated Alabama’s refusal to draw a second Black opportunity district as proof of racial discrimination, ignoring the obvious partisan explanation: Alabama Republicans wanted to maintain a 6-1 Republican congressional delegation.
“A State’s insistence on pursuing its partisan goals in the face of an earlier Section 2 holding does not somehow make those partisan goals racially discriminatory,” the brief states.
The Section 2 Voting Rights Act holding cannot survive Callais. Callais requires plaintiffs to offer an alternative map that meets all of the state’s legitimate districting objectives. The plaintiffs in this case never offered a map that preserved Alabama’s Gulf Coast community of interest, a goal the state has pursued in its congressional maps for more than 50 years.
The district court dismissed the Gulf Coast criterion as “illegitimate,” which the DOJ calls circular reasoning.
The district court violated the Purcell principle. Federal courts are not supposed to change election rules at the last minute. The district court issued its injunction less than three months before the August 11 primary and four hours before candidate lists were due.
The DOJ compares this directly to the recent LULAC case in Texas, where the Supreme Court stayed a similar late-breaking injunction.
“The District Court improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections,” the brief argues, quoting the LULAC ruling.
The brief also flags what the DOJ calls the impossible position the district court has put Alabama in. If Alabama had drawn the second Black opportunity district the lower court demanded, the state would have faced racial gerrymandering liability under Callais. The DOJ argues the court-drawn remedial map “race nevertheless clearly predominated” and would fail constitutional scrutiny under the new standard.
The Supreme Court had previously vacated the district court’s injunction on May 11 and sent the case back for reconsideration. Alabama responded by passing legislation during a special session authorizing the use of the 2023 Legislature-drawn map and a special primary, which Governor Kay Ivey set for August 11.
The August 11 special primary now hangs on the Supreme Court’s response to Alabama’s stay applications.
Sawyer Knowles is a capitol reporter for Yellowhammer News. You may contact him at [email protected].
