The Supreme Court on Monday afternoon cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional map that a lower court had blocked on the ground that it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. The justices threw out the lower-court order barring Alabama from using the map, which it had adopted in 2023, and sent the dispute back to the lower court for another look.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from Monday’s decision, in a four-page opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. In her view, the court’s order was “inappropriate and will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.”
The dispute began five years ago, when Alabama enacted a new congressional map in the wake of the 2020 census. A group of Black voters and civil rights organizations went to federal court, where they alleged that the new map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, because it spread Black voters in southern Alabama across three congressional districts, leaving them a minority in each.
The district court agreed that the 2021 map likely violated Section 2, and it barred the state from using the map. The Supreme Court upheld that decision in 2023 in Allen v. Milligan.
Later that year, Alabama adopted a new map. But a federal court concluded that the 2023 map also likely violated Section 2 and prohibited the state from using it. The Supreme Court declined to pause the lower court’s ruling.
A court-appointed special master ultimately created a new map, which the district court ordered the state to use going forward. In 2025, the court ruled after a trial that the 2023 map did indeed violate the VRA. It reasoned that the map was “an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians’ voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way.”
Alabama went to the Supreme Court, which delayed its consideration of the state’s appeals until after the justices issued their April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, in which it struck down Louisiana’s congressional map. On Friday, the state – which had asked the justices to expedite their consideration of those appeals – also sought to have the lower-court orders barring Alabama from using the 2023 map put on hold immediately because the justices are not scheduled to issue orders from their next private conference until Monday, May 18, just one day before the state’s primary election is currently scheduled to take place.
Alabama told the justices on Friday that its “case mirrors Louisiana’s, and they should end the same way: with this year’s elections run with districts based on lawful policy goals, not race.” When it drew the 2023 map, Alabama said, it sought to “achiev[e] the State’s neutral goals (like protecting incumbents) and refus[ed] to let race predominate.” And on Saturday, Alabama told the court, the state’s Legislature passed a law allowing “a special primary election for affected Congressional districts” if a federal court permits the state to restore the 2023 map.
In an unsigned, one-paragraph order on Monday afternoon, the Supreme Court granted Alabama’s appeal and sent the dispute back to the lower court for another look in light of its ruling in Callais. The justices did not provide any additional explanation for their decision.
In her dissent, Sotomayor contended that there was “no reason” for the court to send the case back to the lower court because the district court had also concluded that “Alabama violated the Fourteenth Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters in Alabama. That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of,” she wrote, “and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais.”
But in any event, Sotomayor continued, “it still would not be appropriate to vacate the decision below at this time. That is because,” she explained, “Alabama’s congressional primary election is next week, and vacating the District Court’s injunction will immediately replace the current map with Alabama’s 2023 Redistricting Plan until the District Court acts, even though voting has already begun.”
Finally, Sotomayor noted, “the District Court remains free on remand to decide for itself whether Callais has any bearing on its Fourteenth Amendment analysis or if its prior reasoning is unaffected by that decision.”