New Black Districts Could Mean New Representation in Alabama, Louisiana

In the 2024 general election, Alabama voters might elect a Democrat to represent the state’s 2nd Congressional District — a roughly decadelong Republican stronghold that last year was redrawn as Alabama’s second majority-Black district.

But according to candidate Shomari Figures, the district isn’t about seeing a Democrat win. “We have an opportunity to have the type of representation that’s going to focus on the needs in communities across this district that have not seen that sort of concern from their federal leadership in the past,” he said.

Figures, who won the Democratic primary in April, is running against Republican opponent Caroleene Dobson. A Democrat hasn’t been elected to represent the 2nd District since 2008. After the creation of the new district, Figures left Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Department of Justice, and returned to Mobile, where he was raised. “This District is home,” he said.

Figures most recently served as the deputy chief of staff and counselor to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. He comes from a prominent legacy — his father, Michael Figures, is a legendary lawyer in Alabama who helped win a $7 million verdict against the Ku Klux Klan over the murder of a Black teenager.

His mother, Vivian Davis Figures, is a state senator whose district includes Mobile. She is the second Black woman in Alabama’s history to be elected to the Senate in 1997. 

“Running for Congress certainly wasn’t part of some master plan for my career,” Figures said. “This opportunity was the perfect blend of what I spent my career doing, and being able to have a more direct impact.”

The VRA plays an important role in establishing fair maps

A majority-Black district doesn’t seem unreasonable in an area where eligible Black voters comprise nearly half of the population. But it came as a result of years of litigation against obstinate Alabama officials, sparked by a 2021 lawsuit over a congressional map with just one majority-minority district. The case culminated in a U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

A similar battle is still playing out in Louisiana, where voters will cast their ballots in a field of Democrats and Republicans seeking to represent the state’s new majority-Black 6th Congressional District. One of those hopefuls is Quentin Anthony Anderson, who leads a social justice nonprofit and started his political career as an intern for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2007. 

“I’ve been a communications director for political organizations, and I’ve been a campaign director for an advocacy group,” the Baton Rouge native said, “but I’ve usually been on the sidelines. One of the things you learn when you’re working in politics is that seniority equals influence. It equals power.”

For Anderson, the new district marks an opportunity to move away from the old guard in Louisiana and bring bolder leadership to the table. One of his opponents is Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields, a prominent, longtime Louisiana lawmaker. The current 6th District incumbent, Republican Rep. Garret Graves, decided against running for reelection in the new district.

“We are at a place where you can boldly and courageously advocate for your people, and you’re not going to lose any political capital doing so.” Anderson said. “That’s the job.”

Neither district would’ve been possible without the Voting Rights Act (VRA) — particularly Section 2. It’s the strongest defense, absent state-level protections, against attempts to dilute the vote, even as the law has been weakened over time, said Michael Li, senior counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program.

But bringing VRA claims is not as simple as filing a lawsuit.

“The [VRA] is a powerful tool, but it’s also a hard one to use,” he said. “It has a number of very technical requirements and preconditions before you can bring a successful claim.”

This is often why it takes years to reach a resolution, especially when state legislators (often the defendants in redistricting cases) double down on discriminatory maps. “Power is at stake,” Li said.

Majority-minority districts can be created — and taken away

After a landmark Supreme Court case in 1986 — Thornburg v. Gingles — established conditions in which a majority-minority district must be created, the nation saw a rise in Black and Latino representation. These increases, according to a 2020 report on minority representation, came about largely through an increasing number of majority-minority districts, particularly after the 2010 Census. The new districts in Louisiana and Alabama followed the release of the 2020 Census. 

But these gains aren’t ironclad. In Florida, for example, the Republican-led Legislature passed a congressional map in 2022 that dismantled a historically Black district that covers Jacksonville and Tallahassee. Pro-voting groups unsuccessfully sued Florida officials, alleging the map is racially discriminatory.

Attorneys for the state argued there was no racial animus behind the map: “And while Republican legislators supported the Enacted Map, and Democratic legislators opposed it, partisanship can’t be conflated with race, and partisan motivation can’t be conflated with racial animus.”

Florida’s rebuttal is a common defense legislators use against claims of racial discrimination. In South Carolina, for example, the state’s NAACP chapter sued Republican legislative leaders over what they alleged was a racial gerrymander (which is brought under the 14th Amendment) and also alleged the map diluted the voting strength of minorities (under the VRA).  

South Carolina Republicans argued they were motivated by political objectives. In a Supreme Court opinion upholding the map, the Court found the plaintiffs didn’t sufficiently show that race — and not political interests — was the driving factor behind the map.

The Court’s South Carolina ruling cited Rucho v. Common Cause, a 2019 decision that essentially put an end to litigating partisan gerrymander cases in federal court, with the high Court determining such cases are beyond its reach. “There’s a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card the Supreme Court created by saying, ‘naked partisanship is fine. We’re not going to police that,’” Li said.

The path to creating Louisiana’s 6th Congressional District was especially fraught, because when the plaintiffs finally secured a majority-Black district, a new group of mostly white voters sued over the new district, alleging it’s an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

That case harkens back to racial gerrymander cases in the 1990s, which were mostly brought by white voters challenging majority-minority districts, Li told Democracy Docket in May. The Supreme Court in May granted a request from both state officials and Black voters to use the contested map this fall, but their decision doesn’t mean the map will stay in place after the election.

“I think everybody recognizes they are going to redraw this district,” Anderson said, “which means they’re going to redraw the entire Louisiana congressional map again in January. And that’s concerning.”

The case further underscores the difficulty in establishing majority-minority districts. Recently in Galveston, Texas, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — the nation’s most conservative federal appeals court — ruled that a coalition of Black and Latino voters who formed a majority-minority district in Galveston County, Texas cannot bring vote-dilution claims under the VRA in their lawsuit against the county’s commissioners court map.

“It’s a bit like getting to the top of a mountain, Li said. “The view from the top is really amazing, but the stuff you have to do to get up the mountain is a real slog, and in the face of opposition, which makes this really hard.”

While polling shows Figures has a strong chance of winning in Alabama, he reiterated that whoever wins must work to represent the interests of the communities in the 2nd District – whether they’re a Republican or Democrat.

“This district is [49 percent] Black, and the vast majority of the people in this district have never had a legitimate opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice,” he said. “But we know that this is not a guarantee. It’s not a slam dunk by any stretch of the imagination. But it is certainly an opportunity.”

Read more on the Alabama case here.

Read more about the Louisiana case here.

This story was corrected to show that a group of non-Black voters sued over Louisiana’s new congressional map, not a group of nonwhite voters.