The U.S. Supreme Court ruled June 2 that Alabama lawmakers can revert to a GOP-backed congressional map in the upcoming midterm elections – striking down a federal court panel order that blocked the map and claimed it was “tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”
The U.S. District court for the Northern District of Alabama issued its order against the adoption of the 2023 map on May 26, meaning the state would have to “continue using a court-ordered remedial map with two black-majority or near-majority districts,” as Zeale News reported. “Alabama cannot revert to the Republican-backed plan, which possessed only one such district — unless state officials win emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Alabama’s use of the 2023 map was prompted by the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in the case of Louisiana vs. Callais, which found that officials’ insistence on majority-non-white districts violated measures against discriminatory voting practices contained in the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The Supreme Court’s June 2 decision cited Callais repeatedly, arguing the case against GOP-backed 2023 map ran afoul of the earlier decision’s directives against race-based discrimination in electoral mapmaking.
Alabama’s Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall had referred to the 2023 map as “blandly unobjectionable” and based on district boundaries that had “been in place for decades” ahead of his appeal to the Supreme Court in response to the May 26 district court order.
Marshall has also suggested opponents of the map are simple partisans rather than advocates of democratic principles. “We’ve had a three-judge panel order Alabama to create what they’ve described as a ‘minority opportunity district.’ I call that a Democratic district.”
— Attorney General Steve Marshall (@AGSteveMarshall) June 2, 2026
In a dissent against the Supreme Court’s ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Katanju Brown Jackson, maintained that the Alabama map “intentionally
discriminates against Black Alabamians.” The dissent also accused the Court of choosing to disregard “both democratic values and the rule of law.”
Alabama’s readoption of the 2023 map is expected to improve the GOP’s odds of picking up a House seat in the 2026 midterms.