A three-judge panel on Tuesday denied a motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit that challenges Arkansas’s congressional district lines as racially discriminatory — a surprising move, considering the same panel of judges dismissed another lawsuit earlier this year that raised similar issues.
The plaintiffs in both cases say the state’s congressional map — which was redrawn in 2020 as part of a regularly occurring redistricting process — violates the constitutional rights of Black plaintiffs by splitting up the Black vote in Pulaski County into three separate districts. Arkansas has just four congressional districts total.
Before 2020, Pulaski County was part of the state’s 2nd Congressional District; the map drawn that year splits up Pulaski three ways, moving more than 41,000 mostly Black voters in the southern part of the county into the 1st and 4th districts instead.
The earlier case, Simpson v. Thurston, is now on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Plaintiffs hope a recent Supreme Court ruling in a voting rights case in Alabama may breathe new life into their suit after it was dismissed by the three-judge panel, which consists of U.S. District Court Judges Price Marshall and James Moody and U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge David Stras.
The same panel is now considering the second case, Christian Ministerial Alliance v. Thurston. But after a hearing on Monday on a motion from the state to dismiss on similar grounds as the first, the panel allowed the lawsuit to proceed for the time being. (Dale Ellis at the Democrat-Gazette has a fine report from the Monday hearing, for those who want details on what was said.)
The judges did not elaborate on their reasoning, but said an “explanatory order will be filed in due course.”