New Alabama Congressional Map Enacted for 2024

The state will feature two Black-majority districts for the upcoming election cycle.

Earlier today, a federal court chose a new congressional map that will be enacted in Alabama for the upcoming 2024 elections. The new district lines will comply with a previous order creating a second district where Black voters can elect their preferred candidate.

In the 2022 round of redistricting, Alabama state legislators drew lines that would once more elect 6 Republicans and 1 Democrat. The Democratic-held district was VRA-protected as it allowed Black voters to elect the candidate they wanted. The state was sued saying the population of African Americans was significant and geographically-condensed enough to require two Black-opportunity districts in the delegation.

The federal court agreed with the plaintiffs. However, the state appealed the ruling up to the U.S. Supreme Court - which allowed the original plan to stay in effect for the 2022 elections. In June 2023, the highest court in the country issued a 5-4 ruling agreeing that two Black-majority districts were required by the VRA in Alabama. The justices that formed the majority opinion included John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The federal court in Alabama overseeing the process gave the state legislature another opportunity to draw districts that complied with the original order. Instead, the Republican-dominated legislature once again created a map that only had one district with a majority of Black voters making up the voting population. The ratio was increased in another but not enough to ensure the population had a compelling say in the outcome of the election. The judges rejected that map and the Supreme Court denied to hear any appeals of the order.

The federal court subsequently hired a special master to comply with the decision. Three maps were submitted to the court last month. And now, the judges have selected Remedial Plan 3 for implementation in 2024. The new map significantly reconfigures the state’s 1st and 2nd Congressional Districts. The latter is turned from a majority-white, safely Republican district into one with a 49% Black voting age population. The map does so by including the entirety of Montgomery and connecting it with parts of Mobile through several rural Black counties that comprise the region known as the “Black Belt.

The remainder of the rural Black counties in the “Black Belt” are covered by Alabama’s 7th Congressional District. That district will maintain its majority-Black status by stretching to cover more of Birmingham instead of dividing counties to pack as many Black voters in as possible to create safe Republican (and white-dominated) districts elsewhere. The 7th District will have a 51% Black constituency. 

The state’s 1st Congressional District will maintain its majority-white, safely Republican status. It will contain the remainder of Mobile as well as the largely white rural counties along the state’s southern border with Florida. The 2nd District’s current Representative Barry Moore, a Republican, could seek re-election in the 1st District. However, he would likely be thrown into an incumbent-vs.-incumbent primary against the 1st District’s current Republican Representative Jerry Carl.

Notably, Joe Biden would have won the state’s 2nd Congressional District during the 2020 presidential election under the newly created lines. It would have produced a 55.6-43.2 finish against Donald Trump. Similarly, Democratic Senator Doug Jones would have won the district during his 2020 re-election campaign. Those results would have been 58.4-41.4 against Republican Tommy Tuberville.

The VRA-protected 7th District has been represented by Terri Sewell, a Democrat, since January 2011. No candidates have yet announced campaigns for the new 2nd District as they were waiting for the final lines from the federal court. However, it’s expected to produce a competitive primary for the Democratic nomination - with the winner being the favorite to flip control of the district in the 2024 general election. With a slim margin in the U.S. House of Representatives, this order is the first of many challenges to state congressional maps due to illegal racial gerrymanders that could propel Democrats to flip the chamber.

The map above highlighting the changes between the old and new districts was created by Daily Kos.