Alabama's AG Doesn't Know What 'Jim Crow' Is

by Brian Lyman, Florida Phoenix
October 4, 2023

Last week, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall issued a “statement on redistricting to the people of Alabama.”

It said his office would abide by a federal court order creating a second majority or near-majority Black congressional district while appealing the ruling.

That’s a standard comment when one loses cases like these. (The office on Friday appeared to have abandoned an immediate appeal of the order.)

But Marshall said a lot more.

The state’s chief law enforcement officer, whose defense of a map generated by the Alabama Legislature hinged on changing Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s mind about the Voting Rights Act, complained that federal judges had “a view of Alabama that was stuck in 1963.” Marshall, whose office often compared majority-minority districts to affirmative action (it didn’t work), said the court order was a declaration that people “must apparently be reduced to skin color alone.”

And he went still further.

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