A panel of lower court judges issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday blocking Alabama from using a map it had previously found to be unconstitutional.
“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 judges wrote.
The Supreme Court had previously lifted a separate injunction on this map, freeing Alabama up to try to use it for the midterms. It only includes one Black-majority district. Alabama will likely go back to the high court to try to undo Tuesday’s order.
While Justice Samuel Alito insisted in Callais, the recent ruling that all but killed the Voting Rights Act (VRA), that this Alabama case would not be affected, the Court immediately agreed to Alabama’s request to send the map back down for further consideration. The state is trying to jam through the old map before the midterms rather than use its current, court-drawn one, which has two Black-majority districts.
“The Legislature well knew that a plan without an additional Black-opportunity district would dilute Black Alabamians’ opportunity to participate in the political process, and it intentionally enacted that very plan,” the ruling said.
A still unresolved question lingers over the Alabama case: whether the Supreme Court will still accept challenges to racial gerrymanders that violate the Equal Protection Clause. That question was not addressed in Callais, though the Roberts Court has shown a prodigious hostility to voting rights in many other contexts. The Alabama panel added that in addition to the constitutional violation, the old Alabama map also violates the VRA even under Callais’ new, seemingly impossible-to-meet standards.
The judges also invoked the Purcell principle, a hazy prohibition on federal courts intervening in voting law cases on the eve of elections, which the Supreme Court has used inconsistently and nearly always to the benefit of the Republican Party.
“Requiring the use of the Special Master Plan will forestall an expensive, aggressive, and perhaps logistically impossible voter reassignment effort,” they wrote. “We take extremely seriously the Supreme Court’s command that federal district courts ordinarily should not intervene on the eve of an election, for risk of causing administrative challenges and confusion. But the record here is clear: enjoining the unconstitutional 2023 Plan will improve the administrative situation in Alabama, not worsen it.”
Read the ruling here:
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
