“A civil rights group is challenging Alabama’s practice of electing appellate judges by statewide vote, saying it has resulted in all-white courts in a state where one of every four people is African-American”. The NAACP is seeking the elimination of the format, and provides multiple replacement options, due to the practical effect of watering down the voting power of African Americans.
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Judges on the Alabama Supreme Court, the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals and the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals are elected through a statewide vote.
A row of police officers stands in front of a rally for voting rights near the Alabama State Capitol in 1965. However, with voting polarized along racial lines, African Americans have been underrepresented on the three courts at issue for decades.
Appellate judges are voted into their positions, where they are meant to represent their state’s adult population. “It is time for the highest courts in the state of Alabama to reflect the diversity of the communities they serve”.
It was filed in a federal court by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in partnership with civil rights attorneys James Blacksher and Edward Still, Montgomery-based attorney J. Mitch McGuire, Crowell & Moring LLP, and the firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP – the last two of whom are working pro bono, according to the Alabama Media Group.
The lawsuit notes that since 1994, every African American candidate that has run for any of the three top courts has lost to a white candidate.
“In the century following Reconstruction”, a court found amid that series of cases, “the Alabama Legislature had purposefully switched from single-member districts to the at-large election of local governments to prevent African-American citizens from electing candidates of their choice, and that the general laws of Alabama governing at-large election systems throughout the state had been manipulated intentionally during the 1950s and 1960s to strengthen their ability to dilute African-American voting strength”. A lawsuit filed in Texas this summer on behalf of Latino voters makes similar arguments, saying the large districts used in judicial elections there disenfranchise minorities.
The courts at issue in this case handle cases of all kinds, including important criminal cases. The importance of these courts is stressed by the fact that 63 percent of Alabama’s prison population is black, according to the NAACP’s lawsuit. His partner Keith Harrison explained, “We believe that African Americans must have an effective part in the election of appellate judgeships in Alabama”.
On Wednesday, Travis and three other African American voters sued the state for conducting its judicial elections in a way they say prevents voters of color from electing the candidates of their choice. A judiciary elected through a racially discriminatory system, like Alabama’s, deprives African-Americans of their own voice in the administration of justice.
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The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyers’ Committee), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, was formed in 1963 at the request of President John F. Kennedy to involve the private bar in providing legal services to address racial discrimination.
