The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 2, 2026, that Alabama may use its 2023 congressional map for the upcoming August special primary.
Supreme Court Reverses Lower Court on Alabama Map
The U.S. In an unsigned 6-3 opinion in the case known as Allen v. Milligan, the justices argued that the Northern District of Alabama’s May 26 ruling—which had declared the map racially discriminatory—unnecessarily disrupted the state’s election preparations. The court wrote that the lower court’s map would not be more convenient
for Alabama than the congressional map the Legislature passed in 2023. Here, the District Court interposed itself into Alabama’s ongoing efforts to conduct its imminent 2026 congressional elections under maps that its elected representatives selected,
the justices wrote. While federal courts should not impose changes close to an election, states are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests.
The decision drew a pointed dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor warned that the court’s intervention would result in a chaotic election.
“Before the Court are two paths. Down one lies an orderly election, held under a tried-and-tested congressional map that protects Black Alabamians’ right to vote and with which all voters, elections officials, and candidates alike are familiar. Down the other lies a chaotic election, held under a never-before-used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamians,” Sotomayor wrote. The majority chooses the second path and disregards both democratic values and the rule of law. I respectfully dissent.
Escalating Tensions Over Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act
The order comes almost a month after the U.S. Supreme Court substantially weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a case known as Louisiana v. Callais. This section serves as the primary mechanism for challenging election practices that are racially discriminatory. Plaintiffs in the Alabama case had filed a 54-page brief urging the court to uphold the lower court’s ruling, arguing that the 2023 map intentionally discriminated against Black Alabamians and that there was no time to reassign voters under a new map. Nothing has changed in Alabama or the record to warrant a different conclusion today,
the brief stated.
Deuel Ross, an attorney for the plaintiffs with the NAACP Legal Defence Fund, wrote in a text Tuesday evening that the decision opens the door for Alabama and others to deliberately and openly discriminate against Black voters without fear of any consequence.
Activists like Joe Reed, a Montgomery-based civil rights activist and lawyer, echoed this frustration, telling the BBC: It’s a big setback for black people. You can discriminate based on politics, but you can’t discriminate based on race. Well, hell, in Alabama, with the polarised voting we have, everything is race. Everything.
Political Stakes and the Future of Representation
Weeks before the order, Gov. Kay Ivey called a special session in which Republican lawmakers set special primaries for August in the expectation that the state would be allowed to use the 2023 map, which would likely cost Democrats a seat in Alabama’s House delegation.
Binny Miller, a law professor at the American University, noted that without the pillars of the Voting Rights Act, plaintiffs would have a much harder time challenging new voting restrictions. Instead, they would have to prove that lawmakers intended to discriminate. When Section 5 existed, it caught a lot of the problems that would have turned into Section 2 litigation,
he said.
The 2023 Supreme Court ruling previously forced Alabama to redraw its congressional maps, which eventually sent additional Black lawmakers to Washington, including Rep. Shomari Figures. Following that 2023 ruling, Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry also urged his state’s Legislature to revamp its congressional map to create a new majority-minority district. The resulting 6th Congressional District, represented by Democratic Rep. Cleo Fields, stretches more than 200 miles, linking parts of the Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette and Baton Rouge areas. However, that map is now also under legal scrutiny, with a group of self-described non-African Americans
filing a lawsuit in January 2024 claiming the map was driven too much by race.
