Federal judges on Tuesday blocked Alabama Republicans’ plan to implement a new congressional map that could give the GOP a leg up in the upcoming midterm elections — a ruling that comes ahead of the special primaries.
The three-judge panel found that the map unconstitutionally discriminates against Black voters and that their ruling is not affected by the Supreme Court’s recent decision narrowing the Voting Rights Act.
They found that a “limited order requiring the Secretary to continue using this Court’s race-blind map will not disrupt Alabama’s elections.”
“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 ruling said.
The judges’ preliminary injunction requires the state to continue using the court-drawn current congressional districts, including a second-majority Black district, that were used in the 2024 election.
The court found that the proposed map cannot be interpreted as “anything other than intentionally discriminatory.”
“And under the unusual circumstances of this case, we conclude that a limited order requiring the Secretary to continue using this Court’s race-blind map will not disrupt Alabama’s elections,” the judges ruled.
State officials asked the court to scrap the previous order that required the map to be used until after the 2030 census, seeking to revert to a court-blocked map from 2023 that had just one Democratic-leaning district.
Republicans can appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The seat at the core of the issue — one that Republicans want to reclaim — is held by Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures.
Lawyers representing Black voters argued that the same judicial panel previously ruled the state’s map was intentionally discriminatory against Black voters, pointing to illegal dilution of their political power.
The ruling bucks the Supreme Court’s decision last month that struck down Louisiana’s court-ordered majority-Black district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, narrowing how states can use race in redistricting. This prompted several Republican-led Southern states — Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee — to pass new, heavily redrawn maps that could eliminate minority electoral districts that have favored Democrats.
Alabama’s redistricting battle stretches back to 2023, when the blocked map was found intentionally discriminatory by this same court.
The mid-decade redistricting frenzy came at the behest of President Trump, who pushed it in GOP states to help Republicans hold the House majority. Democrats responded in kind to help their quest to take control of the House.
Texas was the first to kick off the nationwide battle to redraw districts.
A trial court previously blocked the Lone Star state’s congressional map for racial gerrymandering, before the U.S. Supreme Court intervened to keep the map in place — ruling that Texas’s motive was partisan, not racial, which is constitutionally permissible.
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