Alabama Republican leaders asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to allow them to use a congressional district map that a lower court this week determined discriminated against Black voters.
The fight over Alabama’s map will be the first major test of how the justices intend to apply their recent ruling narrowing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The push to switch out Alabama’s congressional map — a move that could advantage Republicans in the heated fight to maintain their razor-thin majority in the House in the midterm elections — began immediately after the justices’ April ruling that raised the bar to bring a discrimination claim under the landmark civil rights law.
In response, Republicans in Alabama sought to swap out their state’s congressional map and use one that had been rejected by courts in 2023 that included only one majority-Black district, rather than two. A ruling by the Supreme Court in Alabama’s favor would most likely cost Democrats one of those seats.
The court already once instructed a lower court to review the Republican-proposed map in light of its April ruling, which found that courts should strike down maps only if there is evidence they were drawn with an intent to discriminate and not simply to obtain partisan advantage.
Although critics of the ruling had feared that standard would be impossible to meet, a panel of three federal judges found on Tuesday that the state’s actions violated even the new, higher bar set by the Supreme Court and once again nixed its use.
In the emergency request filed on Wednesday, Alabama officials asked the court to move swiftly to clear the way for the state to use the map in special primaries in August for four House districts affected by the change in district lines.
In the application, they argued that the Supreme Court’s April ruling “vindicates Alabama’s position on the lawfulness” of the Republican-friendly map and asserted that the lower court had erred by once again concluding the map was discriminatory and acting as if the Supreme Court’s updated test had “changed nothing.”
The Alabama officials requested a ruling by 10 a.m. on June 1, or “as soon as possible thereafter.” They urged the court to act quickly, saying they wanted to be able to resume election preparations and to assign voters into districts before the election.
The Supreme Court will now have to decide whether to greenlight the Republican-friendly map — a map that a lower federal court has found meets the justices’ new test for a violation of the Voting Rights Act — or to block it and provide a new path for challenging maps as racially discriminatory.
In the weeks since their decision, the justices have faced public scrutiny for issuing a decision in the middle of a heated primary season. The move set off a scramble among Republican-led states in the South to redraw district lines and unravel majority-Black districts, even as voters began to make their primary selections.
In public appearances, the justices have addressed the criticisms. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., a conservative, has defended the court, insisting the justices are not political actors. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal, has been critical of the court’s decision to act with elections already underway.
Indeed, the lower court judges found this week that allowing Republicans to change the state’s map now could sow confusion given that the election will be held in August.
By now, the Supreme Court justices are familiar with the longstanding fight over Alabama’s congressional map.
In November 2021, the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature redrew its congressional voting map, maintaining one majority-Black district out of seven in the state, although Black voters comprise about a quarter of the population.
Black voters and advocacy groups challenged the map under the Voting Rights Act. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which, in a surprise decision in June 2023, agreed that the state’s map diluted the power of Black voters.
Alabama lawmakers then redrew the map but still maintained only one majority-Black district. The new map split up the state’s Black voters, many of whom live in a crescent-shaped region known as the Black Belt, a historically fertile farming region that had a long history of slavery and segregation.
A three-judge panel found in 2023 that this map also illegally discriminated against Black voters.
The panel that reconsidered the issue this month in light of the recent Supreme Court decision this week included two judges appointed by President Trump and one appointed by President Bill Clinton. Again, they concluded that the map was an illegal racial gerrymander.
“We cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,” they wrote in a 79-page decision.
The judges wrote that they were “painfully aware of the gravity of our ruling.” But, they added, “we do not find the issue particularly complex or close.”
Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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