Supreme Court permits Alabama to use congressional map struck by lower court as racially discriminatory

The Supreme Court on Tuesday night cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional map in the 2026 elections that lower courts found to be racially discriminatory. In a four-page, unsigned order, the court held that that “the District Court’s analysis departed from” the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, in which the court (among other things) made it more difficult for plaintiffs to prevail on a claim that a map violates a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in which she criticized the majority for paving the way toward “a chaotic election.” The majority “disregards both democratic values and the rule of law,” Sotomayor contended.

The court’s ruling, which came after 9 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, was likely the final chapter in a dispute that began in 2021, when Alabama enacted a new map in the wake of the 2020 census. Black voters and civil rights organizations challenged the map in federal court, arguing that it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting, because it divided Black voters in the southern part of the state among three different congressional districts, leaving them a minority in each.

After concluding that the 2021 map likely violated Section 2, the lower court barred Alabama from using the map. Alabama appealed to the Supreme Court, which in 2023 upheld the lower court’s decision.

Alabama then drew a new map, which voters and civil rights groups again challenged as a violation of Section 2. A lower court agreed with them and blocked Alabama from using that map, as well. The lower court instructed Alabama to use a map created by a court-appointed special master instead.

Alabama returned to the Supreme Court, which last month, in a one-paragraph order, sent the case back to the lower court for it to reconsider its ruling in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Callais. Sotomayor dissented from the court’s order, in an opinion joined by Kagan and Jackson. Sotomayor argued that the lower court did not need to take another look at the dispute because it had also ruled that “Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters in Alabama” – a finding that “is independent of, and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais.”

Just over two weeks later, on May 26, the lower court – which included one Clinton appointee and two Trump appointees – again barred Alabama from using the 2023 map, directing it to use the map created by the special master instead. The court emphasized that “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.”

On May 27, Alabama came back to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to pause the lower court’s ruling and allow it to use the 2023 map in the 2026 elections. Alabama Solicitor General A. Barrett Bowdre argued that the court’s decision in “Callais vindicates Alabama’s position on the lawfulness of the 2023 Plan, yet the district court decided in one week that Callais changed nothing.” The district court, Bowdre stressed, did not require the challengers to offer alternative maps that would achieve Alabama’s goals while still maintaining two majority-Black districts, as the Supreme Court suggested it should have, and “[i]t did not matter to the district court that drawing an additional race-based district came at the cost of sacrificing communities of interest” – specifically, predominantly white communities along the state’s Gulf Coast – “and pairing incumbents.”

The challengers countered that it was too late for the Supreme Court to intervene. They pointed to testimony by a senior election official indicating that if the state wanted to implement the 2023 map, it would have to finish reassigning voters in its voter registration database by June 2. Indeed, they emphasized, “the evidence in the record shows that Alabama cannot administer” a special primary election in August, under a law passed by the state’s legislature in May to account for the possibility that the Supreme Court’s decision in Callais would allow Alabama to use its 2023 map, even if the Supreme Court had granted Alabama’s request on June 1. Moreover, they added, the Supreme Court’s decision in Callais should make no difference to the lower court’s ruling in their case, because of the lower court’s conclusion that Alabama violated the Constitution by intentionally discriminating against Black voters.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court stated that the district court “failed to follow our instruction in Callais that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns.” It further held that the district court’s decision, not Alabama’s request for relief, had come too late. “We have repeatedly cautioned that lower federal courts should not ‘alter the election rules on the eve of an election,’” the court said. “Here, the District Court interposed itself into Alabama’s ongoing efforts to conduct its imminent 2026 congressional elections under maps that its elected representatives selected. Its view that conducting the elections under court-imposed maps would be more convenient for the State was not a valid justification for that intervention.”

In her 17-page dissent, Sotomayor asserted that Alabama “has no legitimate interest in enforcing an unconstitutional map, while vast harms will likely arise from upending the status quo, sowing chaos in Alabama, and rewarding Alabama’s gamesmanship.” “Because I choose to defend the rule of law and the right of all Alabamians to participate equally in democracy,” Sotomayor concluded, “I respectfully dissent.”