Set Alabama Subscribe

Weather

Birmingham Real-Time News

Lawsuit: Current election system of Alabama

appellate judges discriminates against blacks
Updated Mar 07, 2019; Posted Sep 07, 2016

0
shares

By Kent Faulk | kfaulk@al.com

A voting rights lawsuit filed Wednesday seeks to do away with the at-large elections
of judges who sit on Alabama's three appellate courts, including the Alabama
Supreme Court.
The at-large election system has been racially discriminatory towards African
Americans, who make up more than a quarter of the state's population, according to
the lawsuit that suggests election by single-member districts.

As a result of the at-large voting for the judges and justices, no African American has
ever served on the state's criminal and civil appellate courts and only three on the
nine-member Alabama Supreme Court in the past 36 years, the lawsuit states,

The at-large method "unlawfully dilutes the voting strength of African Americans and
prevents them from electing candidates of their choice," the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to declare that the use of at-large elections for the
three appellate courts violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, halt the further use
of at-large elections for those courts, and to require future elections for those courts
to be conducted under a method of election that complies with the Constitution of
the United States and the Voting Rights Act.

The lawsuit suggests several district methods - dividing the state into five districts
for the state's criminal and civil courts of appeals and either nine or eight district
plans for the nine-member Alabama Supreme Court.

Under an eight district plan, eight associate judges would be elected by district with
the chief justice elected at-large statewide.

As a result of the at-large election method no African American has won an election
to any of the three courts in the past 21 years and no African American has served on
those appellate courts for the past 15 years, according to the lawsuit.

An African American has never served on either the Court of Criminal Appeals or the
Court of Civil Appeals, the lawsuit states.

Three African Americans have served on the Alabama Supreme Court: Oscar Adams,
appointed by the governor 1980 and who won election in 1982 and re-election in
1988; Ralph Cook, who was appointed to replace Adams and who was elected to a full
six-year term in 1994; and John England, Jr. who was appointed in 1999. England and
Cook lost in the 2000 elections.

"Approximately one-quarter of Alabama's population is African-American. African

Americans have been prevented from participating fully in the election of Alabama's
appellate judges because of the way those judges are elected," the lawsuit states.
Voting in Alabama is racially polarized and the state has had a well-documented
history of voting discrimination, the lawsuit states.

"At different points in its history, Alabama utilized poll taxes, literacy tests, and
discriminatory redistricting methods to restrict African Americans' access to the
franchise," the lawsuit states. "A brutal attack on peaceful voting rights marchers at
the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, moved President
Lyndon Johnson to propose the Voting Rights Act eight days later and to sign the Act
just five months later."

The lawsuit also notes the significance of the cases the three appellate courts hear.

"Together, the three courts render enormously consequential decisions that

profoundly affect the lives of all Alabamians," according to the lawsuit.

Nearly 63 percent of Alabama's prison population is black, lawyers for the plaintiffs
say.

The plaintiffs are the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, and four African
American residents and registered voters around Alabama: Sherman Norfleet, of
Perry County; Clarence Muhammad, of Jefferson County; the Rev. Curtis Travis, of
Tuscaloosa County; and John Harris, of Lee County.

"The Alabama NAACP continues to fight for equitable representation of all

communities in our judicial system at all levels," Benard Simelton, president of the
Alabama NAACP, stated in a press release Wednesday. "Alabama cannot continue to
have a system that ignores segments of the community. We believe that a revised
method of electing judges will lead to representation of all segments of the
community."

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Montgomery by the Lawyers' Committee for
Civil Rights Under Law in partnership with Alabama civil rights attorneys James
Blacksher and Edward Still, Montgomery-based attorney J. Mitch McGuire, and with
pro bono lawyers at Crowell & Moring LLP, and the firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan
LLP.

"In 2016, Alabama's appellate courts are no more diverse than they were when the
Voting Rights Act was signed more than 50 years ago," Kristen Clarke, president and
executive director of the Lawyers' Committee stated in a press release. "It is time for
the highest courts in the state of Alabama to reflect the diversity of the communities
they serve. This lawsuit seeks to provide African-American voters an equal
opportunity to elect judges of their choice, achieve long overdue compliance with the
Voting Rights Act and instill greater public confidence in the justice system of
Alabama."

Clarke also said during a teleconference with reporters that the lawuit makes clear
that "voting discrimination is alive and well in Alabama."

Still stated that jurors are supposed to represent all of the adult population, "yet the
state uses a system of electing appellate judges that insures those judges come from
only part of the population."

Blacksher said in the telephone press conference this morning that Alabama is one of
seven states that elect judges to their highest courts in partisan (multi-party)
elections. Of those, five states elect at-large, he said.

If the lawsuit ended quickly in the plaintiffs favor, changes realistically couldn't come
in time to affect this year's election of four judges on those courts, Blacksher said.
The next election is in 2018 but Blacksher didn't rule out the possibility of mid-term
elections.

"The fact that no African Americans are on the Alabama Supreme Court or any other
office elected statewide sends a clear message that black Alabamians remain
subordinate to whites in state government, just as the 1901 Constitution intended,"
Blacksher said in a statement also issued Wednesday morning.

NAACP v. Alabama
 1 of 16     
Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.

Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement,

Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your California Privacy Rights (each
updated 1/1/20).

© 2020 Advance Local Media LLC. All rights reserved (About Us).
The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or
otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local.

Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site.

Ad Choices