As anyone familiar with Mobile's history can tell you, Mobile was forced to change from a three-person city commission to the current mayor-council form when federal authorities found the previous form was racially discriminatory. The history-setting case has been mentioned in numerous pieces of national stature in the past week following the ruling in Callais v. Louisiana.
In 1980, the case of City of Mobile v. Wiley Bolden reached the Supreme Court after lower courts found in favor of plaintiffs, that Mobile effectively disenfranchised Black citizens with its at-large elections. SCOTUS ruled that the Fifteenth Amendment wasn't violated because it was never explicitly stated the electoral structure was for racial purposes, that Mobile's Black citizens were not only free to vote but could run for office if they dared. SCOTUS likewise dismissed any violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
Once remanded to lower court for settlement, a "smoking gun" letter was discovered wherein Mobile lawyer and Congressman Frederick Bromberg advocated for the at-large system to prevent Blacks from holding office. Simultaneous with this discovery, the U.S. Congress bolstered Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act through amendments changing "discriminatory intent" with "discriminatory results." With all this in mind, Alabama state legislators relented in 1985 and drafted a change in Mobile's governance form.
This week's Callais ruling has emboldened those who want to return to single-party rule that breaks chiefly along racial lines. Will this likewise spur some Mobilians to advocate a return to at-large voting, to reverse the results of the Reagan Era change? The City of Mobile's demographics have markedly changed since then, with the city's Black population slightly outnumbering its white residents, largely due to decades of White Flight.
Or might we see a renewed push for a unified county-city government? While the city is 50-53% Black and 40-42% white, Mobile County is 54-57% white and 35-36% Black.