Alabama urges US Supreme Court to bring back GOP-friendly House map for midterm elections

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — Alabama officials returned to the Supreme Court on Wednesday with an emergency appeal seeking permission to use a map that would likely add a Republican seat to the House of Representatives next year, once again thrusting the justices into the nationwide mid-decade redistricting battle instigated by President Donald Trump.

Republican officials in Alabama are appealing a decision from a federal court that blocked the state from using a congressional map that would give the GOP a chance to unseat Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, one of two Black members of the state’s seven-seat congressional delegation. That special three-judge court found that the state intentionally discriminated against Black voters with the map it now wants to use for this year’s midterm elections.

The short-fuse appeal is the latest fallout from the Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision in late April gutting the power of the Voting Rights Act to restrain discrimination in redistricting. That 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais has boosted Republican efforts to redraw state maps this year to help the president’s party retain control of the House.

“Callais vindicates Alabama’s position on the lawfulness of the 2023 plan,” the state told the Supreme Court. “Yet the district court decided in one week that Callais changed nothing.”

Alabama asked for the Supreme Court to decide on its request by Monday.

In its latest appeal, Alabama argues in part that it is too close to the election for federal courts to order changes to the map for this year’s midterm election. The state’s argument relies on what’s known as the “Purcell principle,” a judicial doctrine that warns federal courts against making last-minute changes to the status quo of voting rules before an election.

Even though Alabama already held its primary election earlier this month, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has signed legislation authorizing special elections in August for the affected congressional districts if courts allow the state to use its new map.

The latest appeal follows a complicated legal history that predated Trump’s second term and that has repeatedly pitted Alabama against civil rights groups and federal courts. The state’s congressional map has already made it up to the Supreme Court twice before.

The Supreme Court in 2023 effectively required Alabama to redraw its congressional map to allow for an additional Black majority district, upholding a lower court decision that found the state likely violated the Voting Rights Act by enacting a discriminatory map. Ultimately, voters in Alabama cast their 2024 ballots under a court-drawn congressional map that led to the election of two Black and Democratic representatives.

While Alabama continued to challenge that map on appeal, the Supreme Court decided the Voting Rights Act case on April 29. That contentious ruling dealt with a congressional map in Louisiana, but the decision also made it far harder for Black voters and civil rights groups to challenge potentially discriminatory maps. Based on that major decision, Alabama urged the Supreme Court in mid-May to toss out the court-ordered map in time for this year’s midterm election. The court’s conservative majority agreed to that request on May 11 over the dissent from three liberal justices.

But a special three-judge court in Alabama unanimously shot down the state’s map again Tuesday. The court ruled that Alabama likely violated the Voting Rights Act, even with the Supreme Court’s new high standard, as well as the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

“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 court wrote.

The-CNN-Wire
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