Supreme Court lets Alabama use GOP-drawn map eliminating a majority-Black district

On Tuesday, June 2, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Alabama's emergency application to use its Republican-drawn congressional map for the November 2026 midterm elections. In an unsigned, three-page order issued on the emergency docket, the Court said the state was likely to prevail on its claim that the map was lawfully drawn, and that the lower court had improperly "interposed itself into Alabama's ongoing efforts to conduct its imminent 2026 congressional elections." The justices split 6-3 along ideological lines, with the three liberal justices dissenting.

The order reinstates a map, enacted by the Alabama Legislature in 2023 but never used, that contains only one majority-Black district among the state's seven seats. It displaces the court-drawn districts used in 2024 and overrides a three-judge federal panel that had ruled on May 26, 2026 — for the second time — that the map intentionally discriminated against Black voters in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall had filed the emergency application after that panel ruling. The map is expected to cost Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures his AL-02 seat and to shift Alabama's congressional delegation toward a wider Republican advantage in 2026.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the majority "disregards both democratic values and the rule of law," warning of "a chaotic election, held under a never-before-used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamians." The order extends the line of Voting Rights Act retrenchment running through Louisiana v. Callais, the decision the state had read as loosening race-conscious districting requirements. This entry records the Supreme Court endpoint of the Alabama redistricting fight whose lower-court stage is already archived (see the May 26, 2026 federal-panel entry grouped in the mid-decade-redistricting-wave-ede90564 episode).