Lawyers for Jefferson County are operating on two legal fronts as they try to at least delay the ruling that ordered the county to redraw County Commission districts.

County Attorney Theo Lawson and other lawyers requested a stay from U.S. District Judge Madeline Haikala’s decision that county officials had failed to show during a trial that race was not the major factor when the commission drafted new district lines in 2021. Haikala denied their request.

The county appealed Haikala’s ruling to the 11th Circuit Court while also asking that court to grant a stay, delaying implementation of Haikala’s order. Haikala in mid-September gave the county 30 days to file a report outlining its efforts toward drafting a new district map. County officials had argued that time frame would not give officials and candidates time to meet their deadlines before the March primaries.

In fact, candidates running for commission seats in the 2026 election must have lived in the district they want to represent for at least a year before the general election. With that election set for Nov. 3, 2026, candidates must live in the districts for which they want to run by Nov. 3, 2025. However, new maps won’t be drawn and approved by the court by that time, meaning some prospective candidates can’t be sure which district will include their home.

Haikala’s ruling opened the door to the possibility that the commission could flip from majority Republican to majority Democratic if the map were changed to draw three majority Black districts and two majority white districts, rather than the other way around.

Each side in the case has submitted filings to the 11th Circuit. Attorneys for the county argued that the district court abused its discretion by “misunderstanding … what the law requires.” Citing a legal precedent, they argued that the court disregarded that precedent and concluded past Voting Rights Act compliance betrays a present-day “race-based purpose,” tainting current districts.

County attorneys added in their filing that “for decades, the Commission redistricted without any gerrymandering allegations. They added that the plaintiffs “write off other non-racial explanations for the Enacted Plan as ‘post-hoc-justifications.’”

Attorneys for McClure and other plaintiffs Monday filed a plan for redrawing commission districts. They said their plan “fully remedies the unconstitutional racial gerrymanders this Court identified in its findings of fact, conclusions of law and order. It is consistent with all statutory and constitutional requirements.

“It also satisfies the commission’s purported policy and political goals, outperforming the commission’s 2021 redistricting plan on all race-neutral traditional redistricting criteria.

“In the resulting plan,” the plaintiff’s attorneys wrote, “Black voters are no longer unnecessarily packed into Districts 1 and 2, or stripped out of Districts 3, 4 and 5, in contravention of traditional race-neutral redistricting principles.”