Supreme Court clears path for Alabama to redraw congressional map

Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for Alabama to adopt a new House map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. In a divided decision from a trio of appeals involving Alabama's House districts drawn in 2023, the high court set aside lower court rulings that had blocked the state from using the GOP-drawn map, which contained one majority-Black district. The Supreme Court sent the cases back to the lower court for further proceedings in light of its landmark ruling last month that weakened the Voting Rights Act. The ruling from the high court appears to be 6 to 3, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent. Sotomayor, joined by her two fellow liberal justices, wrote in a dissenting opinion that the move by the Supreme Court to toss out the district court's decisions is "inappropriate and will cause only confusion as Alabamians begin to vote in the elections scheduled for next week." The state's 2023 map contained just one majority-Black district out of seven House districts and was adopted by Alabama lawmakers after the Supreme Court, in an unexpected decision earlier that year, ruled that a redistricting plan enacted in 2021 likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Alabama's current map, used in the 2024 elections, was selected by a three-judge district court panel and includes two majority-Black districts. The state's congressional delegation is currently composed of five Republicans and two Democrats. …