Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama set special primary elections on Tuesday for four House races, a swift response to a Supreme Court ruling a day earlier that helped clear a path for the state to change its congressional map ahead of the midterm elections.
Alabama voters are still scheduled to go to the polls in a week to decide which candidates at the federal, state and local levels will move on to the general election in November. But now, voters in four districts that would be affected by a new congressional map will vote for House primary candidates on Aug. 11.
Those districts include the state’s two majority-Black districts — both held by Democrats — and two neighboring districts that would presumably be affected by a redrawing.
A group of voters filed an emergency petition with a federal court after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday, citing concerns about the dilution of Black voting power and asking for the current congressional map to be kept in place.
The move by Ms. Ivey is the latest response to a different Supreme Court ruling in late April, which declared Louisiana’s congressional map an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965. With other states already tangled in highly partisan redistricting battles, Republican leaders in a number of Southern states saw an opportunity after that ruling to rethink districts where concentrations of Black voters have repeatedly sent Democrats to Congress.
Louisiana already delayed its House primary elections to allow lawmakers time to craft a new map. And Tennessee Republicans last week adopted a new map that splits up the state’s lone majority-Black district, which had long been a stronghold for Democrats.
Alabama had faced a ban on mid-decade redistricting until after the 2030 census. But after the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, state officials asked the courts if they could use a 2023 map that had previously been rejected as a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
On Monday evening, the Supreme Court lifted a key hurdle for the use of that map.
Should a lower court allow that map, the state will most likely keep just one majority-Black district, as the new map would give Republicans a strong chance of flipping a seat currently held by Representative Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat. The four districts that would have a special election in August include Mr. Figures’s and what would be the remaining majority-Black district, represented by Representative Terri Sewell, a Democrat.
The other districts affected are held by Republicans. Those are the First Congressional District, which is along the Gulf Coast and held by Representative Barry Moore, and the Sixth Congressional District, in the center of the state and held by Representative Gary Palmer.
Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting from Washington. Seamus Hughes and Irineo Cabreros contributed research.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
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