Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for Alabama to put in place a new House map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
In a divided decision from a trio of appeals involving Alabama’s House districts drawn in 2023, the high court set aside lower court rulings that had blocked the state from using the GOP-drawn map, which contained one majority-Black district. The Supreme Court sent the cases back to the lower court for further proceedings in light of its landmark ruling last month that weakened the Voting Rights Act.
The ruling from the high court appears to be 6 to 3, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent.
Sotomayor, joined by her two fellow liberal justices, wrote in a dissenting opinion that the move by the Supreme Court to toss out the district court’s decisions is “inappropriate and will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.”
The state’s 2023 map contained just one majority-Black district out of seven House districts and was adopted by Alabama lawmakers after the Supreme Court, in an unexpected decision earlier that year, ruled that a redistricting plan enacted in 2021 likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
Alabama’s current map, used in the 2024 elections, was selected by a three-judge district court panel and includes two majority-Black districts. The state’s congressional delegation is currently composed of five Republicans and two Democrats.
Alabama had asked the Supreme Court to move quickly on the appeals following its landmark ruling last month that undermined Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. On the heels of that 6-3 decision, which involved Louisiana’s congressional map, Republicans in some Southern states are scrambling to redraw their congressional maps and reconfigure districts held by Democrats.
In Alabama, where the primary is set for May 19, GOP Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law a measure that authorizes a special election for congressional districts whose current boundaries would change if the state were given the green light to revert back to its 2023 map.
Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, who represents one of Alabama’s two predominantly Black districts, called the Supreme Court’s decision “incredibly unfortunate” in a social media post Monday. He said it “sets the stage for Alabama to go back to the 1950s and 60s in terms of Black political representation in the state.”
Figures added that he hopes the high court’s ruling will only be a “temporary setback,” and the lower court panel will keep the existing map in place.
The court fight over Alabama’s congressional map has spanned more than half the decade and has been before the Supreme Court numerous times across various stages of litigation.
After the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature adopted new House district lines in 2021, the high court agreed with a lower court that Alabama’s congressional map likely violated Section 2 by diluting the votes of Black residents. The lower court had said the state should have two House districts where Black voters have the opportunity to elect their preferred candidates.
Following that decision, state lawmakers enacted in July 2023 a new House map, which, like the 2021 plan, included a single majority-Black district. State officials said the congressional districts were drawn to minimize county splits, including in the so-called Black Belt, a rural region named for its fertile soil, and to adhere to traditional redistricting principles.
But that 2023 map drew another challenge and again, a three-judge district court panel blocked those congressional districts from being used in the 2024 elections. The Supreme Court declined to let Alabama use those House boundaries, and 2024 congressional elections were held under a remedial map drawn by the district court.
Alabama officials went on to appeal the district court rulings last year, but the Supreme Court had not yet acted on them while it was considering the Voting Rights Act dispute involving Louisiana’s map.
Separately, Alabama Republicans asked the Supreme Court to grant it emergency relief that would allow the state to return to its 2023 map for this election cycle.
“Plaintiffs would have Alabama hold elections under a map that was erroneously ordered at best and unconstitutional at worst. Nothing requires that result,” Alabama Solicitor General Barrett Bowdre wrote in its request. “Americans, no less in Alabama, deserve a republic free of racial sorting now, and state officials deserve an opportunity to give it to them.”
