Supreme Court Lets Alabama Use Republican-Friendly House Map (1)

A divided US Supreme Court reinstated a Republican-friendly congressional map in Alabama, letting the state eliminate a majority-Black House district for the November midterms.

The justices on Tuesday blocked a lower court decision that would have required the state to keep using a map with two majority-Black districts that Democrats won in 2024. Alabama’s Republican leaders can now deploy a map likely to shift one of those seats into the GOP column.

The majority in an unsigned opinion said the lower court improperly “interposed itself into Alabama’s ongoing efforts to conduct its imminent 2026 congressional elections under maps that its elected representatives selected.”

The court’s three liberals dissented. The majority “disregards both democratic values and the rule of law,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the group.

The Supreme Court ruling caps a run of redistricting decisions that collectively have buoyed Republican chances as they vie to retain their narrow congressional majority. The conservative-controlled court has backed Republicans in Texas, New York, Virginia and Louisiana, while siding with Democrats on California’s map.

The latest order expands the impact of the Supreme Court’s blockbuster April 29 decision rolling back use of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 law enacted to protect minority voters from discrimination. The 6-3 ruling sparked a push in Republican-controlled southern states to carve up majority-Black districts that have traditionally voted Democratic.

The Alabama clash was unique because a three-judge panel said the state intentionally discriminated against Black voters when it crafted a proposed map in 2023. The panel, which included two Donald Trump appointees, reaffirmed that conclusion last week after the Supreme Court ordered a fresh look at the case in light of the Voting Rights Act ruling.

The three judges said the Supreme Court opinion didn’t eliminate the need for a second majority-Black district because Alabama had engaged in racial discrimination in a manner that wasn’t at issue in the Voting Rights Act case. The panel said in the May 26 ruling that Alabama violated the Constitution by intentionally leaving Black voters short of a majority in a pivotal district.

“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,” wrote the panel, which consisted of Democratic-appointed US Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus and Republican-appointed District Judges Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall urged the Supreme Court to intervene, saying the ruling would force the state to divide voters up based on their race.

“The state did not intentionally discriminate by declining to intentionally discriminate,” Marshall argued.

The legal wrangling had left Alabama’s elections in a state of uncertainty. Although voters selected party nominees in three of the states’ seven congressional districts on May 19, Republican Governor Kay Ivey set a special primary election for Aug. 11 for the other four districts.

The case presented a new twist on what the Supreme Court’s conservative wing has said is a principle barring lower federal judges from making late changes to state election rules. The high court has described that concept, dubbed the Purcell principle after a 2006 decision, as a way to avoid causing confusion for candidates and voters with an election near at hand.

The Supreme Court itself has been the source of confusion in the long-running Alabama fight. The court intervened in 2022 to temporarily block a map containing two majority-Black districts, with two conservative justices citing the Purcell principle as the reason. The following year, the Supreme Court reversed itself, ruling that the three-judge panel was correct to require the map under the Voting Rights Act to protect against dilution of Black votes.

The high court shifted course again with this year’s Voting Rights Act ruling. That decision threw out the legal underpinnings of the 2023 Alabama ruling but didn’t conclusively resolve the fight and the claim that the state intentionally discriminated against Black voters.

The Supreme Court then injected more uncertainty by moving quickly to vacate a year-old panel decision that was designed to require a second majority-Black district for the rest of the decade. Three liberal justices dissented from that order, which the court issued even though the Alabama election had already begun.

The cases are Allen v. Milligan, 25a1314; Allen v. Singleton, 25a1315; and Allen v. Caster, 25a1316.

(Updates with excerpts from the opinion.)

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