The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional map that a lower court had previously blocked for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
“The justices threw out the lower-court order barring Alabama from using the map, which it had adopted in 2023, and sent the dispute back to the lower court for another look,” SCOTUSblog reports.
The decision follows the high court’s consequential ruling in Louisiana, where the majority ruled a majority-Black U.S. House district was an unconstitutional gerrymander.
🚨 The Supreme Court has restored Alabama's 2023 congressional map with only one majority-black district, vacating several orders that struck down the map under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment. pic.twitter.com/wH4OOGReOd
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) May 12, 2026
SCOTUSblog explained further:
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from Monday’s decision, in a four-page opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. In her view, the court’s order was “inappropriate and will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.”
The dispute began five years ago, when Alabama enacted a new congressional map in the wake of the 2020 census. A group of Black voters and civil rights organizations went to federal court, where they alleged that the new map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, because it spread Black voters in southern Alabama across three congressional districts, leaving them a minority in each.
ADVERTISEMENTThe district court agreed that the 2021 map likely violated Section 2, and it barred the state from using the map. The Supreme Court upheld that decision in 2023 in Allen v. Milligan.
Later that year, Alabama adopted a new map. But a federal court concluded that the 2023 map also likely violated Section 2 and prohibited the state from using it. The Supreme Court declined to pause the lower court’s ruling.
A court-appointed special master ultimately created a new map, which the district court ordered the state to use going forward. In 2025, the court ruled after a trial that the 2023 map did indeed violate the VRA. It reasoned that the map was “an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians’ voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way.”
Alabama went to the Supreme Court, which delayed its consideration of the state’s appeals until after the justices issued their April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, in which it struck down Louisiana’s congressional map. On Friday, the state – which had asked the justices to expedite their consideration of those appeals – also sought to have the lower-court orders barring Alabama from using the 2023 map put on hold immediately because the justices are not scheduled to issue orders from their next private conference until Monday, May 18, just one day before the state’s primary election is currently scheduled to take place.
“This is an incredibly unfortunate decision by the Supreme Court that not only continues their trend of breaking from the norms and precedents set by the Court, but also sets the stage for Alabama to go back to the 1950s and 60s in terms of Black political representation in the state. The conservative justices on the Supreme Court just literally substituted themselves in to be the defense lawyers for the State of Alabama. The Court just gave the state the benefit of an argument the Supreme Court acknowledged just a week ago that the State did not even present in defending its maps,” Rep. Shomari Figures (D-AL) said.
“This Supreme Court did not dismiss the case, so the litigation will certainly continue. My hope is that this is a temporary setback and that three-Republican appointed judges will again find what they found the first time: that the State of Alabama intentionally discriminated against Black voters in drawing its congressional district lines. I ran for this seat to be a voice for all of Alabama, and I’m not backing down from that mission now. The fight must and will go on,” he continued.
“Beyond the courts, we know what has to be done. We will organize, we will register, and we will turnout people in record numbers at the polls,” he added.
This is an incredibly unfortunate decision by the Supreme Court that not only continues their trend of breaking from the norms and precedents set by the Court, but also sets the stage for Alabama to go back to the 1950s and 60s in terms of Black political representation in the… https://t.co/abWRzaZBjh
— Rep. Shomari C. Figures (@repscfigures) May 11, 2026
More from the Associated Press:
Anticipating a court reversal, Alabama officials recently enacted a law allowing it to void the results of a May 19 primary for some congressional districts and instead hold a new primary under the revised district boundaries. Alabama had asked for an expedited decision ahead of the primary.
ADVERTISEMENTAlabama Republicans praised the decision.
“Today, the Supreme Court vindicated the state’s long-held position. Now, the power to draw Alabama’s maps goes back to the people’s elected representatives. That’s our Legislature,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a video statement. Marshall said his job was “to put the legislature in the best possible legal position to draw a congressional map that favors Republicans seven-to-zero.” He concluded with the statement, “Stay tuned.”
Republican House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter called the decision “a massive victory not just for Alabama, but for conservatives across the country.”
In a dissent to Monday’s brief ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the Louisiana case had reversed only one of the grounds upon which the Alabama case had been decided. Although the Voting Rights Act violation is gone, Sotomayor said a lower court could still find that Alabama had intentionally discriminated against Black voters in violation of the 14th Amendment.
