The Supreme Court has told Alabama to sod off:
The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused Alabama’s request to reinstate a congressional map drawn by Republican lawmakers that had only one majority-Black district, paving the way for a new map to be put in place before the 2024 election.
....The court’s order gave no reasons, which is often the case when the justices decide on emergency applications. The ruling clears the way for a special master and court-appointed cartographer to create a new map.
The Supreme Court might be skeptical of race-based legislating in general, but it's downright unfriendly to being flatly defied. They told Alabama to obey a lower court order to redraw their congressional map and Alabama refused. That was never likely to be taken lightly.
So now Alabama's Republicans have lost control of redistricting entirely. That will mean losing at least one seat, and who knows? Maybe more. Once you let a special master loose there's no telling what he'll do.
Good!
Short summary of SCOTUS non-ruling:
You turkeys dominate your state legislature. You turkeys appoint your State Supreme Court justices. Now you don't like their ruling? Then wait til they die and appoint some other justices; perhaps you'll like their rulings better.
But you better hurry up. Soon, you might not be the ones appointing new justices.
Something thing people don't appreciate, or don't want to think about, is that social conservatives believe in intrinsic harm.
They believe that everything that has value has an offsetting harm that they accept because the value is marginally worth it in some way, usually as an expediency.
The greater the harm often the greater their sense of the value of their expediency.
This is really why they all love the petroleum industry and hate EVs.
You can see this as an element in racism where the expediency of excluding non-whites is claimed to enhance social cohesion by limiting possible conflicting input.
That whole second bite at the apple just reeks.
It makes zero sense if there weren't a back-channel pressure campaign running at the same time. I imagine the Supreme Court Advisory Board (Leo Leo, chair) was pretty busy, but we'll never know.
So far so good, and hats off to the people who have fought the good fight.
But Alabama has already defied the SC twice, so there's no guarantee they won't do it again. The special master has submitted the maps (there's very little difference between them I can see), the panel of judges will pick one, and that will be that as far as the case is concerned: Alabama, thou shalt use this map.
And what if Alabama says, for a third time, fk off we'll use our own map? The courts could hold various state officials in contempt, issue fines, even jail them, but ... what would happen come election time?
I can't see Biden federalizing the Guard or anything like that. So what? Maybe federalize the election? Take over administration from the state? That would be a lotta work. Or maybe sue again and get the results of any election held using invalid maps null and void? Would that even work?
MAGAism has devolved into almost nothing except ODD (along with the usual Republican bigotry). I can easily see Alabama just saying "oh yeah? make me!" It can't be presumed we're dealing with rational adults here...
I don't know, but one possibility is that Congress could refuse to seat their "elected" representatives. All of them. With multiple SCOTUS rulings to back them, that seems like a distinct possibility.
Less dramatically, it's clear that the outcomes of elections can be challenged in court, and I would expect an election conducted in the way you describe to get challenged big time, and such a challenge would very likely delay the seating of the "elected" representatives. This in turn could swing the majority in the House, so...big consequences.
Yeah the other option is a major Constitutional battle. Would probably go as you say *IF* the House had a Dem majority (and in that case the next time there's a Rep majority, we could count on them refusing to seat Dem reps for any reason or no reason at all). And if it's a Rep majority the next time, I can easily see them seating the disputed Congress-critters anyway, and in that case I dunno whether the SC would even think it could step in: Congress makes its own rules. And after that, I dunno ... maybe presumptively declare any laws passed in which AL reps made the difference to be invalid? It would be a big Constitutional mess.
While I would be super amused at (D)s playing this kind of game, escalatory constitutional hardball is really dangerous.
Never play chicken with a suicidal person.
Honestly, one could probably challenge an election conducted with that map in state court, and expect a friendly ruling from the State Supreme Court which has already refused to sanction the map.
That puts it all on the state's shoulders.
Another avenue could be a voter lawsuit, from a group of voters who end up in different districts on the two maps. That seems like it would give them the best chance at standing. They could sue under both VRA and equal-protection grounds, I'd think, since this very court has twice affirmed the relevant parts of the VRA. One ask would be enjoining the winner(s) from going to the House, but I don't know how that would turn out.
OTOH, Ohio did something very close to this in 2022 and got away with it, so far-- the legislature and governor drew up maps that the state supreme court said didn't meet Ohio's constitutional requirements-- maybe after they rejected maps prepared by a more-neutral commission?-- anyway the lege and governor just ignored the ruling and iirc went ahead and used their own maps anyway. Strict adherence to the rule of law, you know that's just how Rs roll . . .