Attorney General Marshall Issues Statement on Redistricting to the People of Alabama

My Fellow Alabamians,

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Alabama’s request for emergency relief in the state’s redistricting case. The State will now be encumbered with a racially gerrymandered, court-drawn map for the 2024 election cycle.

The Alabama Legislature passed a fair and reasonable map in 2021 that mirrored what multiple federal courts had blessed in years past. When the U.S. Supreme Court held the map likely had discriminatory effects, the legislature went back to the drawing board and settled on a map that took out the purported discrimination and applied neutral principles fully and fairly. It is now clear that none of the maps proposed by Republican supermajorities had any chance of success. Treating voters as individuals would not do. Instead, our elected representatives and our voters must apparently be reduced to skin color alone. No Alabamian—black, white, Republican, or Democrat—can look at the court-drawn maps that will soon be imposed on us and see anything other than the prioritization of race above all else. Our communities, local economies, and basic geography will be cast aside in the radical pursuit of racial quotas. There simply is no other explanation for the absurd disfigurement.

There should be nothing more offensive to the people of our great state than to be sidelined in 2023 by a view of Alabama that is stuck in 1963. This racial agenda is pressed by left-wing activists, not just in Alabama, but in any Republican state where it might advantage Democrats. If this brazen and divisive commandeering is permitted without even a whisper of concern from other quarters, America’s congressional elections as we know them will never be the same. We will be grouped together by race alone, with counties and cities split down the middle—the same way that we were so wrongfully segregated once before.

My Office will continue our fight to defend the 2023 map, which was enacted by the people’s representatives, and which complies with both the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution’s promise that governments should be colorblind. We will comply with the district court’s preliminary injunction order, while building our case for the 2023 map, which has yet to receive a full hearing. We are confident that the Voting Rights Act does not require, and the Constitution does not allow, “separate but equal” congressional districts. 

Steve Marshall
Alabama Attorney General