In June, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh provided the swing vote in Allen v Milligan that rejected Alabama's racial gerrymandering of congressional districts. Last week a federal appeals court strongly rebuked Alabama's disregard of the Allen decision and appointed two independent parties to draw a CD map that conformed to the law of the land.
One school of thought on Alabama's recalcitrance is that the state has back channel intel that Kavanaugh may be open to reconsideration of Allen on its merits! Even for this court, so unconstricted by precedent, but particularly for this Justice, overruling in September or October a decision in June that he had midwifed, would be shocking, destabilizing of the Court's position in American government, and ultimately, to my thinking, a forlorn hope by Alabama.
