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The U.S. Supreme Court lifted an injunction in Alabama, giving state Republicans a chance to remove one of two Black-majority congressional districts.
In a 6-3 vote on Monday (May 11), the Supreme Court ruled to lift a lower court order requiring Alabama to continue using its current congressional map — which includes two Black districts — until the 2030 census, according to Politico.
However, the legislature attempted to adopt a new map in 2023 that included only a single Black-majority district. Democrat Shomari Figures’s 2024 victory in the second district gave the state two Black representatives serving simultaneously for the first time in history. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Birmingham) has been serving since 2011.
Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana striking down a majority-Black district as unconstitutional, however, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall requested that the injunction be removed and that the state be allowed to use the 2023 map proposal.
The court granted that request, removing the injunction and allowing the 2023 district lines to take effect. Under a bill passed May 8 by the legislature, the results of the May 19 primaries in districts unaffected by the new map will still be counted, while those in impacted districts will be ignored.
“Today, the Supreme Court vindicated the state’s long-held position. Now, the power to draw Alabama’s maps goes back to the people’s elected representatives. That’s our Legislature,” Marshall said in a video statement.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, alongside the court’s two Democratic appointees, argued in a dissent on Monday that the Louisiana case only reversed one of the grounds on which the Alabama order had been issued, and that a lower court could still find that Alabama intentionally discriminated against Black voters.
“That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais,” Sotomayor wrote, adding that it was “inappropriate” for the court to drastically change Alabama’s district lines days before the primary.
Despite voting districts typically being redrawn only once a decade, President Donald Trump’s push last year for Republicans to redraw congressional districts in ways favorable to the party to retain its majority in the midterms has accelerated the process.
Figures said that he hopes this will be a temporary setback on Monday, and criticized the court’s decision as a step backward in Alabama’s voting history.
“This is an incredibly unfortunate decision by the Supreme Court that not only continues their trend of breaking from the norms and precedents set by the Court, but also sets the stage for Alabama to go back to the 1950s and 60s in terms of Black political representation in the state,” he wrote. “I ran for this seat to be a voice for all of Alabama, and I'm not backing down from that mission now. The fight must and will go on.”
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