The Supreme Court's unsigned emergency order lets Alabama use a contested congressional map in 2026, signaling that Callais has raised the bar for VRA Section 2 claims nationwide.
Alabama will use its preferred congressional map in the 2026 midterm elections after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an unsigned four-page emergency order clearing the way for the plan, despite lower court findings that the map discriminated on racial grounds [1]. The Court's majority held that the district court's analysis failed to comply with the standard the Court announced in its April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which tightened the evidentiary requirements for Section 2 Voting Rights Act challenges [1]. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented [1].
The order arose in Allen v. Milligan, the long-running Alabama redistricting dispute in which plaintiffs have argued the state's congressional map unlawfully dilutes Black voting strength [1]. The case has cycled through the federal courts for years, with lower courts repeatedly finding the map deficient under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act [1]. The Supreme Court's June 2 intervention came as an emergency application, bypassing the ordinary merits briefing schedule to resolve a pre-election dispute over which map would govern the state's seven congressional districts [1].
The ruling's practical weight lies in what it signals about Callais. That April decision raised the threshold plaintiffs must clear to establish a minority-vote-dilution claim, and the Court's order in Milligan indicates that threshold now applies retroactively to pending redistricting litigation [1] [2]. For plaintiffs challenging maps in Alabama and other states, the ruling means that evidence sufficient to survive scrutiny before Callais may no longer be adequate, forcing a recalibration of litigation strategy across multiple pending cases as the 2026 election cycle accelerates [2].
Election officials in Alabama are now positioned to proceed with the approved map for primary and general election planning purposes [1]. Plaintiffs retain the option to return to the district court to reconstruct their record under the Callais framework, though the timeline for any renewed challenge before November 2026 is compressed [1]. The three dissenting justices argued the majority's action departed from the Court's own prior instructions to Alabama and granted emergency relief without adequate justification, a position that previews the fault lines likely to shape further Section 2 litigation in the term ahead [1].