The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday (June 2) that Alabama can use a congressional map that eliminates one of the state's two majority-Black districts — a 6-3 decision that hands Republicans a House seat and strips Black voters of representation, according to NBC News.
The ruling split along ideological lines, with the court's conservative majority overturning a lower court decision that had found the map intentionally discriminated against Black voters.
The ruling puts Rep. Shomari Figures — one of two Black Democrats representing Alabama in Congress — at serious risk of losing his seat. His district was drawn specifically to ensure Black voters in Alabama could elect a representative of their choice. That protection is now gone.
The lower court had been unambiguous. A three-judge panel — including two Trump appointees — wrote just last week that they "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 Supreme Court's conservative majority overruled them anyway, saying the lower court had not sufficiently deferred to the state's partisan interests under the court's recent Louisiana ruling that gutted key Voting Rights Act protections.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, was scathing in dissent. The majority, she wrote, chose to enable "a chaotic election, held under a never-before-used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamians."
The ruling, she added, "corrodes the rule of law by rewarding Alabama's gamesmanship and outright defiance of court orders."
The NAACP didn't mince words either. "The Supreme Court's decision gives cover to Alabama and others to deliberately and openly discriminate against Black voters without fear of any consequence," the organization's general counsel, Kristen Clarke, said in a statement, per NBC News. "This is a Court that is stripping Black voters of power and voice at a speed that would put Jim Crow jurists to shame."
Tuesday's ruling is the latest development in a redistricting wave set off by President Trump's push for Republican-friendly maps ahead of the November midterms — a nationwide effort to protect the party's slim House majority.
Alabama, Tennessee, and Louisiana have now all successfully redrawn maps following the Supreme Court's earlier Louisiana ruling.
Alabama's attorney general celebrated. "Tonight's decision is a major victory for Alabama and for the principle of self-governance," Steve Marshall said in a statement.
For Black voters in Alabama, it's something else entirely.
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