Watkins allowed the case to move to a bench trial. “Such a restriction on state action would be toothless without the right to sue for a remedy,” the ruling states. Watkins ruled that Alabama is not entitled to sovereign immunity from the claims, finding that the Voting Rights Act “explicitly” forbids states from imposing any”standard, practice or procedure” that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote” based on race. Keith Watkins in the Middle District of Alabama denied the state’s motion to dismiss the complaint last year.
It also sought the implementation of a new election method consisting of single-member districts.Ĭhief U.S. The group asked the court to declare that Alabama’s use of at-large elections for judgeships in its three highest courts is unconstitutional and violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. “White bloc voting in support of their preferred candidates has repeatedly led to the defeat of candidates preferred by African-American voters,” the lawsuit states. The NAACP says voting patterns in elections for Alabama’s appellate courts “are racially polarized.” As a result, the at-large method of election deprives one-quarter of the state’s voting-age population of the chance to elect judges of their choice to any of the nineteen seats on the three courts,” the complaint states.Īt-large elections do not limit votes on judicial candidates by geography and instead allow all eligible voters to vote on candidates regardless of where in the state they live. “Voting in Alabama is racially polarized: white voters as a group and African-American voters as a group consistently prefer different candidates. The NAACP alleges that black voters are prevented from”participating fully” in the election of Alabama’s appellate judges because their votes are diluted by the votes of white citizens. No black judge has ever served on either of the state appeals courts, the complaint states. In its amended January 2018 complaint, the NAACP pointed out that all 19 judges on Alabama’s Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals and Court of Civil Appeals are white.There have been no black judges elected to any of those three top state courts in over two decades and no black judicial candidate has ever won a statewide office without first being appointed by the governor, according to the lawsuit. In September 2016, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed a federal complaint on behalf of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP alleging that black voters are not properly represented by the judges who preside over the state’s highest courts.