“I’m six generations removed from enslavement on my mom’s side, my daughter and son are seven generations removed,” said Evan Milligan. “These things aren’t abstract concepts to me.” Milligan is a careful speaker with a deep, Southern accent, and an unwavering commitment to civil advocacy. He is the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court’s landmark Allen v. Milligan redistricting case. For him, the decision is connected to a 200-year-old fight over voting power.
In the 5-4 ruling handed down on June 8, 2023, the Supreme Court declared that Alabama’s 2021 congressional district map violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the Court’s 3 liberal justices, in a ruling that requires the state to redraw their map to include an additional majority-minority district.
The decision will have ripple effects throughout the South and will change the power dynamics of national electoral politics to favor the Democratic Party. The next moves of Democratic Leadership will decide the strength and duration of the ruling’s impact.
Milligan was initially brought onto the case because of his work in voter mobilization as Executive Director of Alabama Forward. He joined a recurring coalition meeting to coordinate strategy leading up to the November 2020 election alongside over 30 other civic engagement groups working across Alabama. During the state’s 2021 redistricting, group members turned their focus to providing information about redistricting and fundraising for grassroots outreach.
A coalition of Black voters challenged Alabama’s map on the basis that it “packed and cracked” communities of color into districts that dilute their political power. “Cracking” dilutes the power of Black voters by spreading predominantly Black neighborhoods across many districts, while “packing” concentrates Black voting power into one district and reduces their power in other districts.
The 2021 Alabama map proposal employed both strategies, packing a large number of Black Alabamians into Congressional District 7, while spreading neighborhoods with predominantly Black residents across Districts 1, 2, and 3. The map allows six majority-white districts to cross county lines and distorts the makeup of the Alabama population. Black people make up 27% of the state’s population but hold a majority in only 1 out of 7 districts.
Alabama’s legacy of voter suppression casts a shadow over election day. After the first of the Voting Rights Marches in Alabama sparked national outrage, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. On what is now known as “Bloody Sunday,” state troopers attacked nearly 600 protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Television cameras captured the assault, transforming the protest into a national symbol for the civil rights movement. When video of the protest aired that night, Americans across the country listened to the cheers of white bystanders, watching as deputies swung clubs, whips, and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire at men, women, and children. Milligan said Bloody Sunday was tragic, but pivotal to the passage of the VRA. “That was why they marched. This is a part of our legacy.”
Upon its adoption, the VRA eliminated poll taxes and literacy tests that were proven to be discriminatory against Black voters. Section 5 of the law required that states with histories of disenfranchisement—including Alabama and six other states—receive federal approval for any changes related to elections and voting. The U.S. Justice Department used Section 5 to block over 700 discriminatory voting changes between 1969 and 2008, 100 of which were proposed in Alabama.
However, the Supreme Court unraveled the VRA safety net and gutted Section 5 in the 2013 Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder decision. The 5-4 ruling created momentum for policies to suppress Black voters in states that had previously been limited by federal oversight. Within weeks of the ruling, five states—including Alabama—that were previously barred by federal preclearance enacted restrictive photo ID laws.
Alabama intentionally crafted new, statewide voting requirements that were difficult to comply with. A voter identification law, signed by former Governor Robert Bentley, came into effect in 2014, the same year that 12 rural Department of Motor Vehicles locations closed. For many Alabamians, the closest DMV is counties away. In counties with limited transportation, a photo ID is now nearly impossible to obtain.
Because Alabama is an innovator of regressive policy, Robyn Hyden said she feels greater pressure to innovate social change in response. “The Civil Rights Movement and the Voting Rights Movement were born here in Montgomery, Alabama. Alabama is the birthplace of some very oppressive systems, and also the birthplace of some really innovative freedom fighters.”
Hyden is the executive director of Alabama Arise, an organization that advances legislation to protect and strengthen voting rights. “What you would hear is just the voter apathy, and people who are struggling to participate, but really didn’t understand why it was so hard,” Hyden said. “Overlapping, complicated barriers to voting have been compounding.”
Even with the new Supreme Court decision, conservative lawmakers in Alabama have continued their attempts to suppress Black voters.
Since Milligan, the GOP-controlled legislature approved a new map with only one majority-Black district. After plaintiffs filed complaints, federal judges found the new map was a racial gerrymander on October 4, 2023. An independent mapmaker crafted three options. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama chose a map that increases the percentage of Black voters in one district from 30% to 48.7% and preserves the existing majority-Black district.
But the legal battle is not over yet. While Secretary of State Wesley Allen said his office would implement the map that “the federal court has forced upon Alabama” for the 2024 election cycle, he signaled the state would soon appeal the map afterwards. “It is important for all Alabamians to know that the legal portion of this process has not yet been completed. A full hearing on the redistricting issue will take place in the future,” Allen said in a statement on October 5, 2023.
“The Civil Rights Movement and the Voting Rights Movement were born here in Montgomery, Alabama. Alabama is the birthplace of some very oppressive systems, and also the birthplace of some really innovative freedom fighters.”
The Supreme Court is the last hurdle through which state policy must pass, a critical mechanism to check Alabama lawmakers and protect those marginalized by the state. The Court’s current makeup, however, may be more likely than ever to tolerate maps that voting rights advocates deem racist.
“Alabama is defying the Supreme Court and continuing to push forward maps that do not comply with the court’s order. And they’re doing this because they think that the court might revisit it,” said David Daley, the author of the book Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count. Since publishing his first book in 2016, Daley has dedicated his time to researching, writing, and speaking about this topic.
“You’ll see a new map in Alabama ahead of 2024. It will probably be a map with two districts where Black voters in Alabama have the opportunity to choose a limited number of [representatives],” Daley said. “It’s hard to imagine that those seats would last the decade, that those maps would last a decade, this Court has been pretty clear in the direction that it’s going on race, on affirmative action, and on voting rights. And it’s not in the direction of greater fairness,” he continued.
Daley sees Allen v. Milligan as an opening for the court to eliminate consideration of race from the redistricting process entirely. He views Kavanaugh’s concurrence as an invitation to strike down Section 2 of the VRA. Kavanaugh wrote that “the authority to conduct race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.” The justice clarified, though, that this case did not raise the question of how much longer Section 2 of the VRA should survive. “Alabama did not raise that temporal argument in this Court, and I therefore would not consider it at this time,” he wrote. But the implication was clear—there is a strong chance that Kavanaugh would be willing to engage with this argument in the future.
Daley said lawyers in states such as Louisiana “immediately filed briefs along the lines Kavanaugh suggested, saying that it was not necessary to have racial preferences used in redistricting.” Daley fears Section 2 of the VRA may face a similar fate to the court’s recent affirmative action decision. “We will see this litigated before the court, perhaps even in its next session. These lawyers recognize an invitation from the court when they see it,” he said.
Chief Justice John Roberts has been suspicious of Section 2 of the VRA since he came to Washington. As a young aide in the Justice Department, he worked against the VRA’s 1982 reauthorization. As a special assistant, Roberts wrote more than 25 memos opposing the House bill’s version of Section 2. He also drafted talking points, speeches, and op-eds, prepared officials for Senate testimony, attended weekly strategy sessions, and worked closely with Republican senators to weaken the bill.
“I think those who were surprised missed the way that Roberts works. Roberts, when he is going after major decisions like this, prefers to go slowly. He does a half step before he does the full step,” Daley said. Daley believes that Roberts has knives out for Section 2 of the VRA. “While I do think we are to celebrate the decision in Milligan, it’s simply one skirmish and alert in a longer game, and the longer game isn’t over yet,” Daley said.
Advocates celebrated the Milligan outcome as a rare win for voting rights, as did Democratic elected officials at both the state and national levels. Terri Sewell, the representative for the state’s 7th Congressional District and the sole Democrat that Alabama sends to Washington D.C., said in a statement that the decision was a “victory for Black voters in Alabama and for the promise of fair representation.” The statements of other prominent Democrats echoed these sentiments.
The Milligan decision helps to protect equal voting access, but it also presents a powerful political opportunity for Democrats. Black residents who were previously unable to vote or whose votes held little weight can now mobilize in support of progressive causes.
Milligan believes the right to vote can be a driver of transformative social change. “We’re interested in freedom, democracy, health and welfare of poor communities— communities that are distanced from power,” he said. “In a functional, constitutional, representative democracy, the right to vote is inherent to be able to have any sort of equity or real broad participation within government.”
Hyden similarly believes that enfranchising Black voters will be a critical first step in reducing what she perceives as institutional inequality. “Health care funding, public transit, childcare, addressing inequities in our criminal justice system, fines and fees which are disproportionately burdening low wealth people… these are all systemic inequities that we have to address through elected representatives,” she said.
In Alabama, 80% of Black voters are registered as Democrats, and 96% supported the Democratic candidate in the 2017 Senate election. A congressional map that more accurately reflects Alabama’s population will likely constitute new access to votes for southern Democrats.
Hyden views the Milligan decision as an avenue to expand Black representation in Alabama politics. Although a quarter of the state’s population is Black, not a single Black person holds statewide elected office, a position on the Alabama Supreme Court, or a spot on either appeals court. “Voters don’t have proper representation. We do not have leaders who come from our communities who look like us who share our beliefs,” she said. “Some of that is driven by gerrymandering and some of that is driven by voter disenfranchisement.”
“It’s important to remember that Alabama and the South as a whole actually has the highest concentration of Black voters and LGBTQ voters in the country,” said Hyden. She gestured to reductive stereotypes of Alabama as a backwater state, made up of poor and uneducated white people. She said there is a sense that Alabamians “get the government they deserve.”
But in the 2012, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections, the Democratic vote in Alabama was at or above 35%. “There’s a lot of misconceptions about who is here and what we want in our elected officials. We may not have the voting majority to get some of the progressive policies that we would like to see. But there are a lot of people here fighting and working hard to make change,“ Hyden said.
She believes the Allen v. Milligan decision could boost these efforts. “My hope would be that people are more engaged in the process and that they feel that their vote counts,” said Hyden.
For activists, the effort to ensure a fair voting map for Black voters without a seat at the table can feel hopeless.
“It’s like trying to fight in a Royal Rumble with your hands tied behind your back because only so many people are going to have the time to serve in this capacity,” Milligan said. “Only so many legal services organizations have the funding and the time to spend in our case.”
Benard Simelton views the Allen v. Milligan decision as a call to action, an opportunity to amplify the voices of Black voters and encourage them to run for office themselves. “We need to train candidates, educate them on how to run for office, and then the Democratic Party needs to make sure that they follow through on the state level, as well as the national level,” he said.
Nathaniel Rakich, a senior elections analyst at the website FiveThirtyEight, said the decision could spill over to influence election results throughout the South. He predicts Allen v. Milligan will embolden Democrats and voting rights groups pursuing similar lawsuits in Louisiana, Florida, and North Carolina. The precedent set by the decision increases the likelihood that lower courts come to a similar conclusion as the Supreme Court.
Rakich also said the decision could reinvigorate local Democratic organizing, in states where the party has become nearly invisible. “If you are a Black Democrat living in a district that’s currently Republican, but is going to become Democratic, your local Democratic Party is going to become stronger and more energized,” he said.
“[Milligan] is going to have an impact in Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Texas and South Carolina… the redrawing of districts across those states would be enough to wipe out the Republican majority,” said Chuck Bullock, a professor at the University of Georgia. Bullock is described by colleagues as the grandfather of Southern Politics.
“For the Democratic Party, this is a great ruling,” Bullock said. “[Republicans] want nothing more than to keep the status quo how it is. Their easiest plan is to pack minorities in as few districts with as many numbers as possible. So, if you spread out the Democratic electorate in more than one district, then it makes Democrats naturally more viable in Southern politics.”
The untapped Democratic potential in states like Alabama could be a tipping point for the Party. “Those Democratic seats at the margins could be the difference between which party has majority control in the House,” said Seth McKee, a professor at the University of Oklahoma who researches political realignment in the South. “This is huge. I mean, it really changes the playing field in terms of the outcome of who has power nationally.”
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Milligan views the ruling as a platform to discuss Alabama’s history of voter suppression and build momentum for federally-enshrined legislation to secure voting rights. “I think about the legacy of systems of racial oppression– excluding groups from building financial and political power because of [their] racial identity,” Milligan said, “That’s what’s driving us.”
He works best when he’s on the ground: at marches, speeches, community events, or while canvassing door-to-door. “We’re having conversations about human rights, we’re having conversations about remembrance, we’re looking at tragedies related to enslavement, lynching, and segregation, contemporary tragedies related to the death penalty and incarceration… conversations about those things in length, which people can understand. I think that is just really beautiful, honestly, to be a part of,” he said.
The work is taxing, but Milligan can’t imagine his life without public service. For him, politics is personal. He said his advocacy is so much a part of his story that “it can be difficult to discern where the work starts.” Milligan was raised in Montgomery, surrounded by stories of activism during the Jim Crow era from friends, family, and community members.
“We’re doing something that is really a tradition of this type of advocacy, certainly coming out of Black freedom movements. It started during emancipation— but prior to emancipation groups— with enslaved people,” said Milligan.
According to Evan Milligan, this decision is a game-changer. “Alabama’s best days are ahead of us,” Milligan said. “We have everything we need to be a leader in the 21st century.”
Cover image: Evan Milligan at his home in Montgomery, AL (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)