A three-judge federal panel issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday blocking Alabama from using a new Republican-drawn congressional map for the 2026 elections, ruling that the plan "intentionally discriminated based on race" by including only one Black-majority district. The state must instead use a court-ordered map from 2024 that includes two districts where Black residents compose a majority or close to it, the Associated Press reported.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall wasted no time signaling a fight. He announced the state will immediately appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and dismissed the lower court's reasoning outright.
The ruling lands in the middle of a high-stakes redistricting battle playing out across multiple Republican-led states, a fight that could determine whether the GOP holds its thin House majority in November. Alabama's case is the sharpest flashpoint yet, and the federal panel's decision to override the state's map raises hard questions about how much latitude elected legislatures retain over their own district lines.
The panel's order came after a seven-hour hearing held the previous Friday, during which judges sharply questioned state lawyers about the timeline and impact of the Supreme Court's recent Louisiana redistricting ruling. That ruling struck down a Black-majority district in Louisiana and weakened the federal Voting Rights Act, a decision that Republicans viewed as a path to holding their House majority.
After the Supreme Court's Louisiana decision, its conservative majority agreed to lift an injunction that had blocked Alabama's 2023 state-drawn map and sent the case back to the three-judge panel for reconsideration. Alabama officials moved to implement the 2023 map. Governor Kay Ivey set new special primaries for August 11 in four congressional districts affected by the switch.
But the three-judge panel was not persuaded. The judges cited what they called "undisputed evidence" of intentional racial discrimination in the Republican-backed map. They wrote:
"Ultimately, 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."
The court also addressed concerns about voter confusion from keeping the old map in place. The judges argued that maintaining the 2024 court-approved districts would actually reduce confusion, not increase it, because voters had already cast ballots under those lines in the May 11 primaries. Switching maps, the panel wrote, would require "an expensive, aggressive, and perhaps logistically impossible voter reassignment effort."
Marshall, Alabama's attorney general, saw it differently. He described the blocked map as a "blandly unobjectionable congressional map" and contended the judges had no basis for their decision. His statement carried the tone of a man confident the Supreme Court will bail the state out.
As Marshall put it:
"Know this, in my mind, it is not a matter of whether we win this case, only when."
The political stakes are not abstract. The redistricting fight centers on the seat held by U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, a Democrat. The Republican-backed map would have given the GOP a realistic shot at reclaiming that seat. The court-ordered map with two majority-Black or near-majority-Black districts makes that far more difficult.
Figures said he was pleased with the ruling but acknowledged the fight is far from over.
"This is a significant step in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go before this fight is settled."
Alabama is roughly 27 percent Black. The core question in the case, how many majority-Black districts the state must draw, has bounced between federal courts for years. In 2023, the three-judge panel first ruled that a map drawn by Republican state lawmakers intentionally diluted the voting power of Black citizens and ordered the state to draw two districts where Black voters hold a majority or something close to it. A court-selected map was used in the 2024 elections.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which represented plaintiffs in the case, celebrated Tuesday's order. Deuel Ross, the organization's director of litigation, said the ruling "again vindicated the constitutional rights of voters in the Black Belt, and our clients look forward to voting under a fair map this fall."
Alabama is not an isolated case. About a half-dozen Republican-led states have enacted new voting districts since President Trump urged Texas to redraw its U.S. House lines. The push is part of a broader effort to shore up the Republican House majority heading into the November elections.
Tennessee moved quickly after the Supreme Court's Louisiana ruling, enacting new U.S. House districts that carved up a Black-majority district in Memphis. The state temporarily reopened its candidate qualifying period for August congressional primaries. That move effectively wiped out the state's last Democratic House seat, and longtime Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen subsequently dropped his reelection bid rather than run in a redrawn district.
Louisiana's Republican Governor Jeff Landry postponed his state's congressional primaries, originally scheduled for May 16, until later in the summer to give state lawmakers time to consider a new U.S. House map eliminating a majority-Black district.
Not every Republican-led state followed the same playbook. South Carolina's Republican-led Senate rejected a plan to redraw the state's congressional map, allowing early voting to begin Tuesday for June 9 primaries under existing lines.
Democrats have not been idle, either. California enacted new districts, and Democrats expect to gain a seat from new court-imposed districts in Utah. But the net effect of the redistricting wave has tilted heavily toward Republicans, which is precisely why the Alabama ruling stings.
Marshall's pledge to appeal immediately to the Supreme Court sets up a potentially decisive confrontation. The high court's conservative majority already showed its hand once by lifting the injunction against Alabama's 2023 map and sending the case back. Whether the justices will intervene again, this time to override the lower court's finding of intentional discrimination, is the open question.
The special congressional primaries in Alabama are set for August 11 and will proceed under the court-approved 2024 map unless the Supreme Court acts first. That timeline is tight. If the justices take up the appeal on an expedited basis, a decision could come before voters head to the polls. If not, the court-ordered map stays.
The broader redistricting landscape remains unsettled. Virginia Democrats recently lost their own redistricting fight at the Supreme Court, and Republican leaders like Speaker Johnson have forecast significant GOP gains in the midterms. Alabama's case, though, is a reminder that the redistricting path runs through courtrooms as much as statehouses.
For conservatives, the core frustration is straightforward: Alabama's elected legislature drew a map, and a three-judge panel replaced it with one of its own choosing. The court says the evidence of intentional discrimination is "undisputed." The attorney general says the map is perfectly ordinary. One of them is wrong, and the Supreme Court will likely have the final word.
When unelected judges dictate the composition of a state's congressional districts over the objections of its elected officials, the people who lose the most say are the voters themselves.
