Supreme Court Rebukes Effort To Force Race-Based House Map On Deep Red State

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday to allow Alabama to use a redrawn House map that gives Republicans one additional seat after a lower court previously blocked it.

The Supreme Court based its unsigned 6-3 ruling on April’s Louisiana v. Callais decision in which the Court significantly weakened a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Tuesday, the Court claimed that a May district court ruling, which struck down the GOP-friendly map created by Alabama claiming it as “race-based discrimination,” went against the Callais ruling.

This map was originally blocked by a lower court in April. The state then appealed to the Supreme Court, who, in a one-page letter, requested the district court to reconsider. The district court held to its original standing, so Alabama again appealed to the Supreme Court.

The District Court claimed that the new congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act because “because it had only one district in which black voters were a majority and did not include an additional ‘[b]lack-opportunity’ district,” according to the Supreme Court ruling.

The Supreme Court ruling claimed that the District Court failed “to follow our instruction in Callais that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns,” according to the ruling.

Alabama’s House map delegation consisted of six Republicans and one Democrat from 2011 to 2025. The lone Democrat, Rep. Terri Sewell, had represented a majority black district.

Before the 2024 election, Alabama redrew its congressional map following the Supreme Court’s Allen v. Milligan decision the previous year, which effectively required the state to add another Democratic-leaning seat in which black voters were a plurality.