Supreme Court clears path for Alabama to redraw congressional map
The Supreme Court set aside lower court decisions that had blocked the state from using a congressional map drawn by Republicans in 2023 that contained one majority-Black district.
Updated on: May 11, 2026 / 6:19 PM EDT / CBS News
Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for Alabama to adopt a new House map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
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.