A 6-3 Supreme Court on Monday vacated the federal court order that had forced Alabama to draw two majority-Black congressional districts, clearing the way for state Republicans to redraw the map and eliminate one of them before the May 19 primary. The seat in the crosshairs is Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District, currently held by Democratic Representative Shomari Figures, the Black congressman whose 2024 election was the direct product of the order the Court just threw out.
The Ruling, Stripped of the Procedural Cover
The Court’s order is technically a vacate-and-remand: the justices sent the case back to a lower court for reconsideration under the new doctrine they laid out in Louisiana v. Callais. In practice, that procedural framing is a euphemism. The lower court that drew the two-Black-district map did so because Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act required it, and the Callais decision in late April rewrote what Section 2 actually requires. Sending the case back with the new framework attached is, on the merits, an instruction.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Sotomayor’s line in the dissent was direct: “Vacatur is thus inappropriate and will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week.” Eight days. That is how much runway the Court left for Alabama to redraw a congressional map, push special primary legislation through, and tell voters what district they live in.
Our earlier reporting on the Louisiana ruling that gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act sets out the architecture of the doctrine Alabama is now invoking, which makes Monday’s order less a one-off and more a sequel.
What the Map Actually Does to Figures
Alabama’s 2023 map, the one the Court has now revived, drops the Black Voting Age Population in the 2nd District from roughly 49% to under 40%, according to demographic analyses reported by Alabama Public Radio and the Alabama Reflector. A 49% BVAP district elects a Black Democrat, as it did with Figures. A sub-40% district in southern Alabama, drawn by a Republican legislature, elects a Republican. That is not analysis. That is the design specification of the map.
Figures responded with a statement that named what is happening without hedging. He called the decision “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.” Whatever one thinks of the framing, the demographic math says the framing is not hyperbole.
Representative Terri Sewell of Alabama’s 7th District remains the state’s other Black member of Congress. After Monday, she is almost certainly the only one.
The Eight-Day Problem
The Alabama primary is May 19. Governor Kay Ivey has already signed legislation authorizing special primaries in any congressional district whose boundaries change. The state’s congressional candidates have been campaigning for months on a map a federal court ordered. Voters have been receiving mailers based on that map. County election officials have been printing ballots based on that map. The Supreme Court vacated that map at 5 p.m. on a Monday with eight calendar days before voting begins.
Sotomayor’s dissent flagged the timing precisely because the Purcell principle, the Court’s own doctrine that disfavors changes to election rules close to an election, is supposed to cut against exactly this kind of last-minute order. The majority’s response was to ignore it. The Court that invoked Purcell to prevent expansions of voting access has now declined to invoke it to prevent contractions.
What Comes Next, and Where
Two more Alabama redistricting cases are pending at the Supreme Court. A separate challenge to the Alabama state senate map is before the 11th Circuit. Lower courts in Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina are working through similar challenges under the post-Callais framework. Each of those is a House seat. The cumulative math, if the pattern holds, is a structural Republican advantage of three to five additional safe seats nationally before the 2026 midterm starts.
The Republican Party did not win those seats at the ballot box. The Supreme Court is rezoning them.
The Democratic Institutions Angle
This is the part of the story that does not show up in the procedural reporting and that the editorial track has to surface. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965 because the federal government concluded, with extensive evidence, that southern state legislatures would draw maps to dilute Black voting power if Washington did not stop them. Sixty years later, the Roberts Court has built a doctrine that returns the discretion the 1965 Congress took away.
Alabama’s 2023 map was struck down because a unanimous three-judge federal panel, including a Trump appointee, found it violated Section 2. The Supreme Court did not contest that finding on the facts. The Court changed the legal standard under which the finding was made, and then vacated the order. The 2023 map is now the law of the state again, eight days before voting begins, by virtue of the same Court that sat on the same case while a different map was used in 2024.
That is the institutional story. Whether you find it convincing or not depends on whether you think the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was solving a real problem or a fake one. The justices who dissented Monday think it was solving a real one. The six justices who vacated think they have a better framework for the post-VRA era. The voters of Alabama’s 2nd Congressional District will find out, in eight days, which view is operative.
What to Watch
Watch three things between now and primary day. First, whether the lower court issues a stay or accepts the 2023 map outright. Second, whether the Alabama Democratic Party can field candidates fast enough to contest a redrawn 2nd District in any meaningful way. Third, whether the four other states with pending Section 2 cases see similar vacatur orders before November. If they do, the structural shift the Court engineered Monday is not Alabama’s story. It is the country’s.
By the Live News Chat editorial desk. Reporting on the federal courts, voting rights, and the intersection of legal doctrine and political outcome since 2019.