Supreme Court lets Alabama use map that helps GOP, hurts Black voters

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on June 2 said Alabama may use a congressional map that was previously deemed to have intentionally discriminated against Black voters – the conservative court’s latest redistricting decision that benefits Republican efforts to hold onto a narrow U.S. House majority in the midterm elections.

The decision reinforces how difficult – if not impossible − it will be for racial minorities to challenge election maps after the court significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act in April.

In an unsigned opinion that was opposed by the court’s three liberal justices, the majority paused a lower court’s ruling that had blocked Alabama from using a disputed map.

The map, passed by the GOP-controlled legislature in 2023, has only one district with a significant Black population instead of the two districts that were included in a map the lower court had said the state must use.

The GOP-preferred map, that three-judge panel said, was “tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”

“We conducted a searching review of extensive undisputed evidence from legislators and the Legislature and could not understand the 2023 Plan as anything other than an intentional effort to dilute votes based on race,” the panel wrote. “We concluded that if this record did not rebut the strong presumption of legislative good faith, we doubted the presumption is ever rebuttable.”

But the Supreme Court said the panel wrongly interpreted Alabama’s disagreement with the lower court’s initial ruling against the map as proof of discriminatory intent.

The majority also said the panel should not have blocked the map so close to an election because states “are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests.”

In a dissent joined by her two liberal colleagues, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the majority’s decision “debases the democratic process by upending Alabama’s entire election in the name of permitting Alabama to discriminate against Black Alabamians.”

Intentional discrimination is the new standard the Supreme Court set in its April decision − Louisiana v. Callais − for evaluating whether the voting power of racial minorities has been unfairly restricted.

The Trump administration backed Alabama’s argument that the lower court's ruling defied Louisiana v. Callais so the Supreme Court should intervene.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said the three-judge panel strained to find racial bias while overlooking “numerous lawful explanations” for the district lines – such as keeping similar communities together in the same districts and preventing two incumbents from having to run against each other.

“Callais vindicates Alabama’s position,” Marshall wrote in the state’s emergency appeal, “yet the district court decided in one week that Callais changed nothing.”

Voting Rights Act ruling set off scramble

In the majority’s opinion throwing out a Louisiana map for relying too heavily on race to sort voters, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the Voting Rights Act "requires evidence giving rise to a strong inference of intentional discrimination." It's not enough, he said, that a map "fails to provide a sufficient number of majority-minority districts."

The new interpretation of the Voting Rights Act prompted several Southern states to redraw congressional maps to eliminate minority-heavy districts even when voting on this year’s candidates had already begun.

After issuing its decision, the court expedited finalizing the ruling to help Louisiana quickly impose a new map

And the justices directed the three-judge panel in Alabama to reconsider its 2025 rejection of the GOP-preferred map – resulting in a new rejection in May that the state immediately appealed to the high court.

NAACP General Counsel Kristen Clarke said the Supreme Court "is stripping Black voters of power and voice at a speed that would put Jim Crow jurists to shame."

"Our message to communities remains the same − the best way to express dissent is by showing up at the ballot box this election season," Clarke said in a statement.

Alabama's map has been disputed for years

The state’s map has been in contention since Alabama lawmakers drew new boundaries after the 2020 Census that included one district out of seven with a majority of Black voters. African Americans account for more than a quarter of the state's overall population. 

In 2023, the Supreme Court unexpectedly ruled against the state and rejected the map as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. The map the GOP-controlled legislature passed in response to that decision is the subject of the latest ruling.

Supreme Court's other redistricting rulings

In other redistricting decisions this year not tied to the changes in the Voting Rights Act, the court allowed Texas to use a map drawn to help the GOP pick up as many as five additional seats in the U.S. House.

The justices also allowed California to use a map that could send five additional Democrats to Congress.

The court declined to intervene after Virginia’s Supreme Court blocked a new map designed to elect four more Democrats from the state.