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The bench trial for the lawsuit against the Jefferson County Commission over alleged racial gerrymandering will begin on Jan. 13, 2025.
The county is currently represented by three white Republican commission members and two Black Democratic commission members. The plaintiffs allege that Black voters have been sorted into the two Democratic districts without any justification under the Voting Rights Act in order to dilute their voting strength.
First filed in April 2023 by Jefferson County voters, Greater Birmingham Ministries, and the state and local NAACP, the complaint in McClure et al. v. Jefferson County Commission et al. states that the commission has “intentionally [packed] Black voters based predominately on race into two supermajority Black commission districts without a sufficiently compelling justification.”
The complaint specifically charges that the recent redistricting violates the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and links it to the body’s history of discrimination, including the tenure of Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor on the commission.
One of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses, William S. Cooper, wrote that “the Enacted Plan continues a tradition dating to the 1980s of just two ‘packed’ super-majority-Black districts in the five-district Commission plan, with Black voters fragmented or ‘cracked’ across the other three districts.”
An expert witness retained by the Jefferson County Commission, Dr. Michael Barber, concluded though that “the enacted 2021 maps were drawn in a way that race was not the predominant factor.” Barber argues in his report that the predominant factor was trying to “retain the population of the 2013 commission districts.”
In a deposition, Barry Stephenson, the chairman of the Jefferson County Board of Registrars, said that the commission collectively drafted three different district maps. “Race never came up,” he said, testifying that the commissioners almost exclusively cared about continuity with their original districts and population totals.
Alabama has been the site of several lawsuits over racial gerrymandering in recent years. Most notably, a preliminary injunction in Milligan v. Allen required the state to utilize a court-drawn Congressional district map in the 2024 elections.
Some figures in the state Republican Party have grumbled about the new maps and ongoing lawsuits. Former Alabama Republican Party chair Terry Lathan said in November that “an election might be two years from now, but that does not mean our legislature might not take another look at it.”
In addition to Milligan v. Allen, the Southern Poverty Law Center is also backing lawsuits against voter roll purges, restrictions on early voting, and districting in state legislative maps. SPLC lawyer Jess Unger told APR before the election in November that “all four of our cases on voting rights issues in Alabama will continue.”
If the lawsuit is successful, and the districts are redrawn, it could significantly shift the balance of power on the Jefferson County Commission.
In the 2022 election, every candidate ran uncontested, save for Republican Jimmie Stephens who had a Libertarian challenger, but more evenly divided districts could render the 2026 elections competitive.
