Alabama Republicans rejected the idea of creating a second majority-Black congressional voting district and opted instead to increase the percentage of Black voters in a district below the 50 percent threshold, as they face a Friday deadline (July 21) to comply with a recent U.S. Supreme Court order to redraw congressional districts.

In a surprise ruling on June 8, two of the court’s conservative justices – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh – sided with the three justices on the court’s liberal wing in a decision that reaffirmed the Voting Rights Act, which the high court gutted in its 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling.

The decision upheld a lower-court ruling that took issue with Alabama’s GOP-crafted congressional map that created just one majority Black district out of seven congressional districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black.

Under that ruling, the federal judges ordered Alabama to draw new congressional lines to create a second district where Black voters are the majority “or something quite close to it” so they can have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice. The judges gave Alabama until the end of this week to comply.

Politico reports that on Monday (July 17) the Permanent Legislative Committee on Reapportionment approved in a 14-6 party-line vote to adopt a plan that would increase the percentage of Black voters in the 2nd Congressional District from around 30 percent to nearly 42.5 percent.

It’s unclear whether the federal court will view a district that is 42.5 Black as compliant with its order to create a second district that is at least “something quite close” to a majority-Black district.

Alabama House Speaker Pro Tempore Chris Pringle is betting that the GOP’s proposal to increase the percentage of Black voters from about 30 percent to 42.5 percent in the 2nd Congressional District will satisfy the court because he thinks it gives Black voters a greater chance to elect their preferred candidates.

“We took in consideration what the court asked us to do, which was to provide an opportunity district that complied with Section 2 (of the Voting Rights Act,)” Pringle said, according to Politico.

But the group of voters who sued Alabama over the Congressional map have proposed the creation of a second district where Black residents are 50.5 percent of the population, the Associated Press reports.

They say that Alabama Republicans have not provided evidence that increasing the Black population in the redrawn district but keeping it below 50 percent truly complies with the court’s order. “Any plan with a low Black voting age population does not appear to comply with the Court’s instruction,” Deuel Ross, the attorney who argued the case before the Supreme Court, told the AP.

“It is clear that Alabama Republicans are not serious about doing their job and passing a compliant map, even in light of a landmark Supreme Court decision,” Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation, told the AP.

The U.S. Constitution requires states to redraw their congressional district lines every 10 years after census results. Often, the party in control of state legislatures manipulates the process to win political advantage.

According to AL.com, Blacks comprise 27 percent of the state’s population, but they only constituted a majority in one of the state’s seven congressional districts, which adds up to just 14 percent of the districts.