The US Supreme Court ruled that Alabama can use a redrawn congressional map that eliminates one of the state's two majority-Black districts in the 2026 midterm elections. The 6-3 decision represents a major victory for Republicans in the state and marks another significant blow to voting rights protections for Black voters.
The map at issue was passed by Alabama in 2023 after courts had previously struck down an earlier version as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. A three-judge panel had concluded that the 2023 map was intentionally drawn to discriminate against Black voters. The panel wrote that they could "not understand the 2023 Plan as anything other than an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians' voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way."
The lower court had ordered a special master to redraw the map, which resulted in two majority-Black districts. The panel issued an injunction preventing Alabama from using another map until after the 2030 census. Alabama's current map includes five districts represented by white Republicans and two represented by Black Democrats. The reinstated 2023 map eliminates the seat held by Representative Shomari Figures, which stretches from Mobile across the state's Black Belt region, and replaces it with a Republican district.
The Supreme Court's majority offered no explanation for its decision, despite previously stating that the relevant voting rights law had not been overturned. The court's three liberal justices dissented from the ruling. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, that "the record showed that Alabama made an intentional choice to perpetuate and entrench, rather than remedy and uproot, the racial discrimination that the District Court had previously found and that this Court had affirmed."
Sotomayor added that the court "unceremoniously discards the District Court's meticulously documented and supported discriminatory-intent finding and careful remedial order without any sound basis for doing so and without regard for the confusion that will surely ensue."
The ruling comes just days after the Supreme Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a case involving Louisiana's congressional districts. Alabama quickly returned to the court asking it to lift the injunction, which the court did on Tuesday.
The decision reflects how aggressively the court's majority is willing to allow Republican states to redraw districts that reduce the political influence of Black voters. Historically, the Supreme Court has avoided upending election rules close to elections, but the court abandoned this principle both in the Louisiana case and now in Alabama. Republicans in Tennessee, Louisiana, and South Carolina have also moved quickly to implement new maps ahead of the fall elections.