Alabama can use a redrawn congressional map that eliminates one of the state’s two majority-Black districts in this year’s midterm elections, the US supreme court ruled in a 6-3 decision on Tuesday, another major blow to Black voters and a win for Republicans.
The court’s emergency ruling is the most consequential decision it had issued since its landmark ruling in late April that struck down a critical provision of the Voting Rights Act. In that case, Louisiana v Callais, the court’s majority made it nearly impossible to win Voting Rights Act claims, saying that plaintiffs had to prove intentional discrimination. But on 26 May, a three-judge panel said the map Alabama wants to use for this year’s midterm was enacted with discriminatory intent.
But in an unsigned opinion on Tuesday, the court’s conservative justices said the panel had failed to properly reconsider the case in light of the Callais decision and other recent cases weakening the Voting Rights Act.
The lower court had failed to give the legislature a presumption of good faith, the justices wrote. And the panel had failed to meet a new test outlined in Callais that an alternative map offered by plaintiffs in the case to remedy Black vote dilution could perform as well or better on so-called neutral redistricting criteria, like Alabama Republicans’ insistence on keeping gulf coast communities together (in a 2023 majority opinion, chief justice John Roberts wrote he did not find that argument persuasive).
In a sharply worded dissent, the court’s three liberal justices accused the majority of causing chaos and abandoning the rule of law.
“Before the Court are two paths. Down one lies an orderly election, held under a tried-and-tested congressional map that protects Black Alabamians’ right to vote and with which all voters, elections officials, and candidates alike are familiar,” Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“Down the other lies a chaotic election, held under a never-before-used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamians, that Alabama adopted in unashamed defiance of a prior court order directly affirmed by this Court, and that will require officials to change the voter registrations of hundreds of thousands of voters in just days at best, a task that Alabama previously represented would take months,” she added. “The majority chooses the second path and disregards both democratic values and the rule of law.”
The court’s order is the latest development in a long legal battle over Alabama’s congressional map. After the 2020 census, Alabama enacted a congressional plan that had six Republican districts and one Democratic one. The Democratic district was the only majority-Black district in the state.
Black voters sued the state over the map, saying the plan violated the Voting Rights Act and unlawfully diluted the influence of Black voters. A three-judge panel agreed with that argument and ordered the state to produce a new map “to include two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it”. In a 5-4 decision in 2023, the supreme court upheld the court’s decision.
When Alabama Republicans went to redraw the map in 2023, they passed a plan that did not comply with the court’s order. The map they sought to implement again only had one majority-Black district. The court blocked that map, saying it was drawn with discriminatory intent, and appointed a special master to draw a new congressional plan. That plan, which had two majority-Black districts, was used in the 2024 election. Both districts elected Black Democrats.
After the supreme court’s decision in Callais, Alabama, took the extraordinary step of moving its fast approaching primaries and sought to again implement the 2023 map. The three-judge panel again blocked that map on 26 May, saying: “We cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”
The state has already held several primaries, but Republican governor Kay Ivey delayed four congressional primaries until August.
