The Supreme Court's unsigned 6-3 order restores Alabama's GOP-drawn map, erases a court-ordered Black district, and tests the reach of the Court's April Callais ruling.
The Supreme Court reinstated Alabama's Republican-drawn congressional map on June 2, 2026, reversing a three-judge district court's finding that the state's 2023 map was intentionally discriminatory against Black voters [1]. The unsigned 6-3 order eliminates the second majority-Black congressional district that had been in place since 2024, restoring a configuration that civil rights plaintiffs had successfully challenged at the district court level [2]. The decision takes effect for the 2026 midterm elections, arriving with candidate filing deadlines already in motion.
The order emerges from litigation that has shadowed Alabama's congressional maps for years. A three-judge federal district court had found the 2023 remedial map, drawn after years of court orders directing the state to create a second majority-Black district, still fell short of constitutional and statutory requirements under the Voting Rights Act [2]. Alabama appealed, and the Supreme Court granted the state's application on an emergency posture, bypassing full merits briefing. The case sits within the broader Allen v. Milligan saga, in which the Court's 2023 majority opinion required Alabama to redraw its maps to remedy vote dilution against Black voters [1].
The ruling's practical stakes are immediate. Representative Shomari Figures, the Democrat who won the second majority-Black district in 2024, stands to lose his seat under the reinstated map [1]. Three liberal justices dissented sharply, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing that the majority was rewarding Alabama's years-long pattern of defiance of court orders [2]. The order applies the Court's April 2026 decision in Callais, which significantly curtailed the use of race-conscious remedial districts under the Voting Rights Act, to unwind the relief a lower court had already granted [2]. That application demonstrates how quickly Callais is reshaping the federal judiciary's toolbox for VRA enforcement.
The decision raises a structural question that lower courts will confront through the election cycle: whether any race-conscious remedial map can survive Callais scrutiny, or whether the April ruling effectively forecloses court-ordered majority-minority districts as a remedy for proven vote dilution [1]. Redistricting practitioners and state legislatures are watching the downstream effects. No merits argument is scheduled; the order is final as issued. Litigation over Alabama's maps may continue in separate proceedings, but the 2026 electoral lines are now set [2].