Supreme Court Lets Alabama Use GOP-Drawn Map a Lower Court Called Racially Discriminatory

The Supreme Court cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional map in the 2026 elections that lower courts had found to be racially discriminatory, a late-evening order that hands Republicans an advantage in a closely watched midterm cycle.

In an unsigned order issued Tuesday night, the court's conservative majority paused a lower-court ruling that the map was likely unconstitutional and allowed the state to proceed with the boundaries it prefers. The map, first adopted in 2023 and twice blocked by a three-judge panel as discriminatory against Black voters, contains a single district where Black voters make up a majority and favors Republicans in six of the state's seven congressional seats.

The justices divided 6-3. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a sharp rebuke of the majority's willingness to let a map flagged by the lower court stand while litigation continues. The dissenters warned that the order would entrench a districting plan that judges had already concluded dilutes the political power of Black Alabamians.

In its four-page order, the majority held that the district court's analysis "departed from" the Supreme Court's April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, a ruling that made it significantly harder for plaintiffs to prevail on claims that a map violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. By leaning on that precedent, the majority signaled a continued narrowing of the landmark 1965 law's reach over how states draw their political boundaries.

The decision lands months before the November 3 midterms, when control of the closely divided House of Representatives is at stake. Voting-rights advocates cast the order as the latest in a string of rulings weakening federal protections against racial gerrymandering, while Alabama officials hailed it as a vindication of the state's authority to set its own districts. The underlying case will continue in the lower courts, but for the 2026 cycle, the Republican-favored lines will be the ones on the ballot.