Just over two weeks after the Supreme Court cleared the way for Alabama to use a congressional map that a lower court had blocked as racially discriminatory, Alabama returned to the court. In a filing on Wednesday morning, the state asked the justices to pause a new ruling by a panel of federal judges that once again barred the state from using the map on the ground that the map “intentionally discriminated based on race in violation of the Constitution” and therefore could not stand even after the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais. That decision, issued late last month, made it more difficult for plaintiffs to prevail on a claim that a map violates a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Unless the lower court’s decision is put on hold, Alabama Solicitor General A. Barrett Bowdre told the justices, both “Alabama and the public face irreparable harm … because they will be unable to use the State’s ‘duly enacted plans’ for the 2026 election. Worse still, voters will be forced to vote under a court-drawn racially gerrymandered map that does not meet Alabama’s legitimate districting goals.”

Wednesday’s filing was the latest chapter in a dispute that began in 2021, when the state enacted a new congressional map. A group of Black voters and civil rights organizations went to federal court to challenge the map. They contended that the new map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bars racial discrimination in voting, because it spread Black voters in southern Alabama across three congressional districts, leaving them a minority in each.

Alabama urges Supreme Court to allow for use of congressional map struck by lower court as racially discriminatory | SCOTUSblog