Supreme Court allows Alabama to use congressional map lower courts rejected as discriminatory

The Supreme Court on Tuesday night permitted Alabama to implement a congressional map that federal judges had blocked as racially discriminatory, overturning a lower court order issued just days earlier.

In an unsigned four-page order released after 9 p.m., the majority concluded that the district court had failed to follow the Supreme Court's April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which raised the legal threshold for proving voting rights violations. The majority found Alabama "likely to succeed on the merits" when the case returns to lower courts.

Three justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, warned that the order paves the way toward "a chaotic election" and said the majority "disregards both democratic values and the rule of law."

The dispute centers on how Alabama divides voters among congressional districts. After the 2020 census, Alabama enacted a new map that Black voters and civil rights organizations challenged, arguing it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by splitting Black voters in the southern part of the state among three districts where they remained a minority in each. A federal court agreed and blocked the map. The Supreme Court upheld that decision in 2023.

Alabama then drew a revised map in 2023. Voters and civil rights groups challenged that version too, again claiming it violated Section 2. On May 26, a district court agreed and instructed the state to use instead a map created by a court-appointed special master. The lower court emphasized it could not "see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes" under a map "tainted by intentional race-based discrimination."

Alabama asked the Supreme Court to block that ruling and allow the 2023 map for the 2026 elections. State Solicitor General A. Barrett Bowdre argued that Callais vindicated Alabama's position and that the district court had ignored the Supreme Court's guidance.

Challengers countered that intervention had come too late. They cited testimony from an election official indicating the state needed to complete voter database changes by June 2 to implement the new map. They also noted Alabama's legislature had passed a law in May creating a special primary election process only if the Supreme Court allowed the 2023 map, and that such an August primary was administratively impossible.

The Supreme Court majority rejected the district court's finding that Alabama had intentionally discriminated against Black voters in adopting the 2023 map. The lower court, the majority wrote, should have presumed the legislature acted in good faith and instead treated the state's legal disagreement with prior court orders as proof of bias.

The majority also faulted the lower court for not applying standards from Callais. That court had struck down a map offered by challengers, the majority noted, because it did not achieve the state's goals of keeping Gulf Coast communities together and avoiding contests between incumbents. The lower court also failed to follow Callais guidance that voting patterns split along racial lines do not automatically indicate racial discrimination in voting.

Finally, the majority held the district court itself had acted too late by changing election rules near the election. "We have repeatedly cautioned that lower federal courts should not alter the election rules on the eve of an election," the court wrote. It acknowledged that "states are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests."

In a 17-page dissent, Sotomayor argued Alabama "has no legitimate interest in enforcing an unconstitutional map" and that the record of intentional discrimination was "crystal clear." She contended the majority's order ignored vast evidence and noted that Callais "purported to say nothing about how to find discriminatory intent under the Fourteenth Amendment."

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall called the ruling a victory, saying it affirmed that "Alabama's elected representatives, not federal judges, have the primary authority to draw the maps."

Deuel Ross, director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, which represented challengers, criticized the order as giving "cover to Alabama and others to deliberately and openly discriminate against Black voters without fear of any consequence."