The Voting Rights Act Was Born Out of His District. Now It’s Under Threat

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, elections are about voters choosing their politicians. But what happens when the map lets politicians choose their voters? Well, many argue that the Alabama State legislature’s push to redraw congressional districts is doing just that. And people are protesting. This follows a Supreme Court gutting the key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, making it harder to challenge plans that dilute voting power along racial lines. Our next guest, Democratic Representative Shomari Figures, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the implications of the court’s recent ruling.

 

HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks. Representative Shomari Figures. Thanks so much for joining us. You are a representative, Democratic congressman from Alabama. I guess let’s start, you know, a little bit further back. You, you ran back in 2023. Growing up, what did you know about the Voting Rights Act?

 

REP. SHOMARI FIGURES: Well, look, I had the privilege of being raised by parents who were both elected officials. My father was one of the first Black senators elected in the state of Alabama post-Reconstruction. My father integrated University of Alabama’s Law School. My mother was on the city council in the city of Mobile, whose city form of government was formed through a challenge in a very well-known Supreme Court case, Boldon v. City of Mobile. It was actually cited in this most recent Louisiana case as well. So I grew up, you know, under the shadows of it, understanding what it means, what it meant, the role that it played in both of my parents being in elected office. And so, you know, I grew with a history and an understanding and an appreciation and a respect for what the Voting Rights Act meant.

 

SREENIVASAN: So what did the creation really of your district, the one that you represent now, what did that mean? How did that impact Black voters in your area?

 

FIGURES: After the decision came down from the Supreme Court in 2023, which effectively allowed the lower court to impose a requirement on the state to redraw its districts, you know, it created an opportunity. It created an opportunity district, which was exactly what the Court designed its remedy to do. Gave the state of Alabama the opportunity to do it. They refused to do it. And so the Court essentially had the district redrawn by an independent party. And it gave for the first time a legitimate opportunity to a significant portion of the state — and the African American population in the state — the legitimate opportunity to elect a second member of Congress.

 

My district is not a majority Black district, contrary to popular belief it’s about 47% black, 46% white. So it’s a very racially diverse district. And within that district, it provided a legitimate opportunity for myself and candidates like me to have a shot at actually being elected.

 

SREENIVASAN: Just to back up for our audience. At that time, the Supreme Court said that essentially Alabama lawmakers had created and adopted a map that discriminated against  Black citizens, right?

 

FIGURES: Correct. So when it went to the Supreme Court, the first time, they had, you know, these Voting Rights Act cases work on a preliminary finding. And so the original part of the case that went to the Supreme Court, the lower court had found that there was a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in ‘23. And then the court ordered that the districts be redrawn. And then there was a subsequent trial held in 2024 where the court actually made the finding that there was discrimination, that there was intentional discrimination. And, you know, by that time we’d already you know, been running for election and been elected. So this all began with a finding, ultimately a finding of intentional discrimination that the lower court found that the state of Alabama had actually engaged in.

 

SREENIVASAN: Okay. So, here we are, fast forward now to the present day, and because as a ripple effect of what happened with the Supreme Court in Louisiana, what is the conversation today at the Alabama legislature? What are the maps that they wanna put back in?

 

FIGURES: So, Alabama wants to do something that we don’t want them to do. They wanna go backwards. Backwards in terms of using maps that they had previously tried to use. And also backwards in terms of what those maps the outcomes that will ultimately come from, you know, having elections with those maps. You also gotta remember that in this case, because of how the state acted in the litigation, they refused to comply with several court orders, there’s actually a court order in place with the lower court that prevents the state of Alabama from actually redrawing its districts until after the 2030 census, unless the Supreme Court overturns the case, which has not happened. So what the state legislature is essentially doing now is trying to lay the groundwork that would allow them to move very quickly in the event that a court does allow the state to redraw its maps.

 

And so they are amending the primary election schedule. We’re already in the middle of a primary election. It’s already started for absentee voting, I’ve already voted myself ’cause I will not be in the city on election day. They are amending the primary schedule and also passing contingency maps. These are both maps that the state legislature had previously adopted, but that were declined to be used by the federal court. And so in the event that the court lifts the order, they can use these maps and hold the election at a later date than is typically allowed under our current law.

 

SREENIVASAN: You know, at the core of this is this idea that how districts are drawn will inevitably predispose the outcome. If I have X number of Black people in this district, they are likely to vote Democratic. If I don’t, they’re likely to vote Republican. This is a solidly red state. So how, how much of that plays out when it actually comes to people pulling the lever? Is it all sort of an automatic kind of party-line vote? Is it by demographic? Is it by race?

 

FIGURES: Look, I’d have to pull the exact data points in the state of Alabama, but at the end of the day, I mean, this decision has essentially said that it’s okay to end up in a place where you have discriminatory outcomes as long as you tell us that they were done for partisan reasons. And so another way of kind of saying that is that it’s okay to discriminate against Democrats who are Black as long as you don’t discriminate against Black people who are Democrats, which leads, again, which leads to this very awkward sort of conundrum, right. Of how do you of, you know, almost a chicken and egg conversation, right? Which comes first.

 

And so, you know, you know, this is going to have real impacts in the state of Alabama, not just at the congressional level, but at every single level of partisan election government, right? So you’re looking at state senate maps, which is also involved in some litigation here in the state where they also made a finding there. You’re going to be looking at state representative maps, state school board maps, judges and other officials. So this is a pretty, pretty significant impact.

 

SREENIVASAN: You know a Black Republican state representative in Ohio, Josh Williams, you know, he was talking about the Louisiana decision. He said, look, “the idea that black Americans need special districts carved out just for them as complete nonsense. It’s a violation of the law and blatantly unconstitutional.” Of course, the White House is cheering this decision of the Supreme Court, they called it “a complete and total victory.” And that “the color of one’s skin should not dictate which congressional district you belong in.” What’s the response to that line of thinking?

 

FIGURES: Look, I think it’s, I think it’s misleading, first and foremost the Voting Rights Act is not about carving out districts for Black people to win. The Voting Rights Act is about carving out districts that create a legitimate opportunity for fair representation so that you can’t water down the Black vote in a way that essentially makes it meaningless in terms of having a legitimate opportunity to influence the outcome. You know, that’s a I think that’s generally a principle that most people can agree with, right? And it’s unfortunate that the gentleman from Ohio doesn’t see it that way. But look, I think, you know, to the White House’s point of this being a complete and total victory, that’s not the case. It’s far from the case. They were hoping that the Voting Rights Act would be deemed unconstitutional, which the court did not do. It certainly was not a complete and total victory for the state of Alabama, because in the decision, Justice Alito specifically says, We are not overruling the Alabama case. In fact, he goes so far as to highlight the fact that in the Alabama case, the state did not even attempt to defend its map as being drawn for partisan reasons. And so I think that speaks volumes to what the state of Alabama did and how the Supreme Court views what they did.

 

SREENIVASAN: Even if it’s not Alabama, are you concerned that there’s gonna be ripple effects throughout the South here? I mean, we already see kind of movements in Tennessee and possibly in other states as well.

 

FIGURES: Oh, for sure. There will certainly be ripples across the country. Those ripples will certainly be more pronounced, if not exclusively pronounced in states, that have a Republican trifecta have a Republican governor, a Republican-led Senate, Republican-led State House. It’s also going to be disproportionately across the old South which was the place that the Voting Rights Act was borne out of because of historical discriminatory practices that we saw across states like, you know, Alabama and Louisiana and Mississippi and Texas and Georgia and Tennessee, and South Carolina and a handful of others. And so we’re definitely going to see it. So there’ll be ripple effects, not just across the country. But again, across every level of government that runs partisan elections.

 

SREENIVASAN: How much of this, what’s happening in Alabama, what’s happening in Tennessee, are in, in other places, Louisiana, are part of this national arms race, if you will, to try to shore up districts for the presidential or the midterm cycle?

 

FIGURES: Well, what started in Alabama was not part of that.

 

SREENIVASAN: Right.

 

FIGURES: Because this, this case in Alabama started right after the 2020 census. This lawsuit was originally filed in 2021. And it was still sort of ongoing. And now unfortunately because we are seeing the president regard, you know, regardless of which term you want to use, whether it’s rig the election, stack the deck for the election, move the goalposts of the election, or changing the rules of the game during the game — whatever term you want to use, because he is leading that effort — you are seeing states grasp at every opportunity that they have to pick up seats. This is something obviously that started in Texas. California responded and appropriately responded, didn’t have an option but to respond. We’ve seen other states pick up the charge from Donald Trump to act in the same manner. And we most recently saw Virginia come in and respond as well. And we expect other states to get involved in this. 

 

At the end of the day, this is a race to the bottom. And when it’s all said and done, I think the margins are going to look very similar to what they look like now in terms of legitimate, you know, seats that a Democrat or a Republican can win when you, you know, aggregate the results across the country. And so this is just not the place that we should be in. But Texas started this, Donald Trump started this, and this was certainly not something that was going on back in 2020 when this matter first started in the state of Alabama.

 

SREENIVASAN: What do you think about the speed at which in the Louisiana case — there’s usually this sort of 32-day period between when the ruling is announced and when the justices formally passed a decision. They kind of fast track that in this case. And, you know, just really even the, in the way that the justices were speaking to each other. Justice Jackson in her dissent to the court saying, look, this is gonna be “spawning chaos in the state of Louisiana.” And the Justice Alito calling her reasoning “baseless and insulting” and says it “lacks restraint.” How do you view that as somebody who’s watched the Court?

 

FIGURES: I mean, listen, it’s certainly different than the language that I grew up reading and, and studying when I was a law student. You know at the end of the day, well, we have to remain at a place where we can continue to have faith in our judiciary. If we lose faith in the judiciary branch as a whole in its entirety you know, then we then we’re in a dark place as a country. And, you know I’m not a fan, obviously, of this particular Supreme Court decision that came out. But I am a fan of the decision that created the pathway for me to get to Congress in the first place. And that was through a three judge panel decision. Two of those judges were appointed by Donald Trump, and one was originally appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan. And even they, you know, unanimously determined that Alabama had intentionally racially discriminated. So look, we obviously want to see our court in a way where they maintain collegiality to the fullest extent possible. But at the end of the day, we have to be in a place where we can, you know, make our voices heard, ultimately at the end of the day, to get to a point where we can actually have more say over what type of justices and what type of judges are being put on the court in the first place.

 

SREENIVASAN: What are the next steps here in Alabama? And is this primarily a resistance to this decision when this kind of framing in Alabama state legislature by Democrats and the left, are there people who are Republicans and independents who are also concerned by this?

 

FIGURES: Look, I think concerns are abound across the board from a variety of reasons. You look at, for instance, my, the district that I represent right now, one of the counties, my hometown county, mobile county Alabama, we now have two members of Congress, one on each side of the aisle. A lot of people, Democrat and Republican, like that dynamic. They like the fact that regardless of who’s in control in Congress, regardless of who’s in control of the White House that we have a legitimate opportunity to be able to further the legislative priorities that matter locally, that we have legitimate opportunities through both sides of the House to be able to pursue federal appropriations requests. So it’s something that, you know, not everybody is just in lockstep with it in terms from a voter base.

 

In terms of what’s next first and foremost in the state of Alabama, like we are a business as usual in terms of me being in Congress and Congresswoman Terri Sewell being in Congress. Nothing has changed in the state of Alabama. The law has not changed. In fact, the Supreme Court explicitly said, we are not overturning the Alabama case. And so the state is grasping at straws. They’re literally pulling out every stop. They’re trying to file every type of motion that they can possibly file at the Supreme Court and at the lower court until this point nothing has resulted in anything that’s going to allow the state of Alabama to redraw its congressional maps.

 

SREENIVASAN: When you talk to Alabama Republicans and ask them one-on-one, whether it’s in the hallways or wherever, and say, Listen, you knew these maps were bad. And at the moment your party is fighting to put those maps back in. What’s their response to you?

 

FIGURES: I think at the end of the day, you know, it is similar to what we hear with Donald Trump. A lot of Republicans despise Donald Trump in private. They speak out against the things that he’s doing. They speak out against the harm that he’s causing. I met with some farmers earlier who were diehard Republicans, but they were definitely not a fan of the impact that the tariffs have had on them, the impact that these rising fuel costs have had on them, and the impact that the lack of support, you know, coming to the ag community while we’re seeing support go to other farmers in Argentina has had on them.

 

And so, you know the question is, is what does that loss of support how does that translate into people making their voices heard? And are they willing to, you know, speak out and vote against that sort of you know, that sort of thinking that’s literally harming them. And so, you know, here we see a lot of that, that same sentiment with the maps. You know, some Republicans know that they were problematic. Some Republicans certainly know what the underlying reason was behind lines being drawn. The way they were drawn was to put as many Black voters who they assume will vote democratic into a single district to limit their impact. And they know it’s wrong. But unfortunately not too many of ’em are willing to step up to the plate to actually push back on it and get to a map that allows for fair representation opportunities.

 

SREENIVASAN: How much of this comes down to kind of national political allegiance versus doing what’s good for your specific state and what’s good for your specific constituents? ‘Cause that’s kind of what you are elected to go do, right? To keep the interests of the people in Mobile that sent you there.

 

FIGURES: Yes. And for me, that interest extends not just for Mobile, but all the way up to Montgomery, the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, which is why this case has even more relevance and significance to me. Like the Voting Rights Act ultimately came out of what started in Montgomery in 1955 and the Civil Rights Movement. And places like Tuskegee in my district as well with their long storied history. 

 

I think a lot of it comes from more of an allegiance to party than it does to country. And that’s, you know, especially this sort of race to the bottom now where you’re literally seeking to minimize. And in the state of Alabama’s case, they’re coming out saying, Hey, we’re going to eliminate, eliminate the — and this is coming from people in leadership in the state legislature, that they wanna eliminate every single opportunity that a Democrat has to win in the state of Alabama. And that is nuts. That sort of, that sort of philosophy — if that was the mindset when we went into a constitutional convention, we would not have emerged with the United States of America. If you told smaller states, if you told you know, people who may have been in the minority of a political party at that time, that, Hey, we want to create a system. We want to create a national of laws that’s going to allow us to mute you, to remove your ability to have legitimate opportunities to be represented in federal government. They all would’ve pushed away from the tape. And so at the end of the day, this sentiment is just un-American. It’s not right, it’s not fair, and it’s not making us the best nation that we can possibly be.

 

SREENIVASAN: Representative Shomari Figures, Democrat from Alabama, thanks so much for your time.

 

FIGURES: Thank you. Have a good one, man.