Lawsuit seeks to topple Alabama's all-white courts

By Thandisizwe Chimurenga
Wednesday Sep 07, 2016 · 2:50 PM EDT

Well now, this ought to be interesting: A federal lawsuit has been filed charging that Alabama’s three highest courts—the state Supreme Court, Court of Civil Appeals and the Court of Criminal Appeals—violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because their benches consist of all-white judges. The Alabama State Conference of the NAACP is representing the plaintiffs, four black residents of the state who say that the culprit is at-large races with partisan primaries.

The plaintiffs are demanding the federal district court in Montgomery divide the state up into districts that each elect a member of the state’s Supreme Court and appellate courts. That way, the few sections of the state with majority-black populations have a chance at electing a judge of their choice to the courts. They hope the court will force the state to make this change by 2017 or 2018.

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. Only two black judges have ever been elected to the state Supreme Court, and zero have served on either the Court of Criminal Appeals or the Court of Civil Appeals in the entirety of the state’s history.

Not to get too far off topic, but the at-large system of voting recently came under fire in Ferguson, Missouri, where a judge halted local school board elections for the same reason—at-large voting dilutes the ability of black communities to elect representatives from those communities. Back to Alabama:

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http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/9/7/1567657/-Lawsuit-seeks-to-topple-Alabama-s-all-white-courts