The Supreme Court just handed Alabama Republicans a clean win, ruling Tuesday that the state can use its GOP-drawn congressional map for the 2026 midterms and blocking a lower court that claimed the redistricting plan "intentionally discriminates against Black people." Democrats spent years and millions trying to carve out a second majority-Black district in a state with 7 congressional seats. The Court said no.
The unsigned order restores a map that gives Republicans 6 favorable districts and Democrats 1 — down from the 2 they'd clawed out through a court-drawn map used in 2024. The big loser here is Democrat Shomari Figures, who represents Alabama's 2nd District and now will almost certainly lose his seat. Figures only got there because a panel of judges drew him a district. Now the voters get to decide with the map their elected legislature actually passed.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall argued the state "did not intentionally discriminate against Black residents and should be allowed to hold elections this year under a map chosen by lawmakers, not judges." That's it. That's the whole argument. Let the legislature do its job.
The lower court panel — and this is rich — was composed of three Republican-appointed judges, two of them Trump appointees, who found what they called "undisputed evidence" of intentional racial discrimination. Even Trump's own judges tried to sink this map. SCOTUS overruled them anyway.
The Court leaned on the Purcell principle, established in the 2006 case Purcell v. Gonzalez, which says federal courts shouldn't be changing election rules on the eve of an election. Alabama had already held its primary on May 11, and Governor Kay Ivey had scheduled special primaries for 4 affected districts on August 11. The justices wrote that "the District Court interposed itself into Alabama's ongoing efforts to conduct its imminent 2026 congressional elections under maps that its elected representatives selected." Translation: back off.
Naturally, Justice Sonia Sotomayor had a meltdown in her dissent, writing that the ruling "debases the democratic process" and "corrodes the rule of law by rewarding Alabama's gamesmanship and outright defiance of court orders." Gamesmanship. That's what they call a state legislature drawing its own maps now. The three liberal justices dissented, because of course they did.
Here's what Democrats don't want you to understand: Alabama's population is approximately 27% Black. The state has 7 congressional districts. One majority-Black district is proportional. Two was a gift from activist judges. The Court just took the gift back.
This comes on the heels of the Supreme Court gutting remaining Voting Rights Act provisions back in April, including a ruling out of Louisiana that struck down another court-ordered Black-majority district. The pattern is clear: the era of judges drawing congressional maps to guarantee Democratic seats is over.
Democrats will scream about voter suppression. They always do. But what actually happened is simple — the people of Alabama elected a legislature, that legislature drew a map, and the highest court in the land said that map stands. That's not suppression. That's how a republic works.
As reported by America's Voice News, this ruling locks in a 6-1 GOP advantage in Alabama heading into November. One less safe seat for Democrats in a cycle where they need every scrap they can get. Couldn't have happened to a nicer party.