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alabama
'Debases the Democratic Process,' Sotomayor Warns as Supreme Court Allows Racist Alabama Map
"Just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the court today doubles down on chaos," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Jun 03, 2026
The US Supreme Court late Tuesday gave Alabama a green light to use an aggressively gerrymandered congressional map that a lower court said was "tainted by intentional race-based discrimination."
The unsigned decision, from which the high court's three liberal justices dissented, enables Alabama's Republican-dominated government to replace its current congressional map, which has two majority-Black districts, with a map that the US Supreme Court struck down in 2023. That map has just one majority-Black district.
In her dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that "just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the court today doubles down on chaos."
"In addition to being wrong on the merits, the court’s decision inflicts two grave harms on the public," wrote Sotomayor. "It debases the democratic process by upending Alabama’s entire election in the name of permitting Alabama to discriminate against Black Alabamians. It also corrodes the rule of law by rewarding Alabama’s gamesmanship and outright defiance of court orders."
The liberal justice noted that in order to switch to the map previously struck down by the high court, Alabama election officials "will have to reassign hundreds of thousands of voters across the state to new congressional districts."
"Three of Alabama’s counties will be particularly hard hit because they are split across two congressional districts," Sotomayor noted. "These counties have about 600,000 registered voters between them (roughly 15% of the state’s total number of registered voters).”
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, postponed US House primary elections in the wake of the Supreme Court's April decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which severely narrowed the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial discrimination and paved the way for Alabama and other states to impose new maps ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“The Supreme Court’s shameful ruling allowing Alabama to move forward with a gerrymander that was drawn with the explicit intent to dilute Black voting power—as found by a panel of judges that included two Trump appointees—is an absolute affront to the founding principles of our democracy, and wipes out whatever was left of the court’s credibility,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation. “This country deserves better, and we must continue to work toward federal legislation that not only bans partisan and racial gerrymandering but also ensures that our rights cannot be undermined by captured courts.”
The ruling drew condemnation from the two Democrats in Alabama's US congressional delegation. Rep. Shomari Figures, who was elected to the US House under the independently drawn map that Alabama Republicans are working to replace, said in a statement that "the Supreme Court has now confirmed that there is no longer a Voting Rights Act in America, and states are essentially free to discriminate against minority voters with no consequences."
"This is a dangerous ruling that sets the state and this nation back decades," said Figures.
Rep. Terri Sewell called the ruling "just the latest in a pattern of outrageous Supreme Court decisions that help Republicans desperately cling to power ahead of the midterm elections while diluting Black voices and erasing decades of hard-fought civil rights progress."
"No matter how hard Alabama state officials may try, they will not succeed in silencing our voices," said Sewell. "We will not go back to the Jim Crow era. The fight for fair representation continues."
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Citing 'Intentional Race-Based Discrimination,' Court Blocks Alabama's GOP-Rigged Electoral Map
“We reject in the strongest possible terms the state’s attempt to finish its intentional decision to dilute minority votes with a veneer of legislative regularity," said the panel of three judges—two of them Trump appointees.
May 26, 2026
A three-judge panel on Tuesday temporarily blocked Alabama from using a Republican-drawn congressional map created to effectively disenfranchise Black people, who make up more than one-quarter of the population of a state that, by GOP design, has just one majority-Black House district.
United States Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus, a nominee of former President Bill Clinton, and District Judges Anna Manasco and Terry Moorer—both of whom were nominated by President Donald Trump—granted a motion by Alabama state Sen. Bobby Singleton (D-24); Black voters, and groups including the national and state ACLU, the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP, Legal Defense Fund, and Southern Poverty Law Center to block the state from using a racially rigged congressional map approved by the GOP-led Legislature in 2023.
The panel unanimously found that Alabama could not use the map because it “represents an intentional effort to crack the Black population in Alabama.”
“Ultimately, we cannot see our way clear to requiring Alabamians to cast their votes in the 2026 elections under a districting plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination,” the judges wrote.
🧵 The Supreme Court's Callais ruling made it harder to prove in court that a legislative map dilutes minority voting strength.But a three-judge panel today confirmed that intentional racial gerrymanders can still be struck down by federal courts.Here’s what you need to know about Alabama 👇
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— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) May 26, 2026 at 10:31 AM
“Cracking” is the splitting of communities of color to dilute their power in a given district. The related practice of "packing" refers to placing people of color in the same district in order to prevent them from having greater political power in surrounding districts.
The same three-judge panel had blocked a previous attempt by Alabama Republicans to implement a congressional map lacking a second Black opportunity district in defiance of a US Supreme Court ruling affirming a lower court's order to create such a district.
"We do not lightly intrude in state affairs, but our previous review of the undisputed evidence left us in no doubt that Alabama’s legislatively enacted plan (the “2023 Plan”) intentionally discriminated based on race in violation of the Constitution," the three judges wrote in Tuesday's decision. "Our re-examination in light of Callais yields the same conclusion."
Last month, the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines in Louisiana v. Callais that the Southern state's congressional map is “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander" because race—specifically, ensuring representation for Black voters—was the predominant factor in redistricting. The decision ironically voided the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps in court.
Citing Callais, Alabama and other Southern states rushed to redraw their congressional maps to dilute Black voting power and satisfy requests from President Donald Trump for GOP-controlled state legislatures to rig districts for partisan gain ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Callais was followed by another 6-3 US Supreme Court ruling earlier this month, which found that Alabama could use the 2023 map, prompting liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor to dissent and point out that the high court previously found that “Alabama violated the 14th Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters.”
That ruling came two days after Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey had signed legislation authorizing new primary elections if federal courts agreed to rescind the creation of the second Black opportunity district. Ivey's signature came despite ongoing primaries in Alabama.
Black voters sought a temporary restraining order against the 2023 map, arguing that the 14th Amendment still banned redistricting that was deliberately discriminatory, regardless of Callais.
“Alabama cannot use Callais to legitimize its pre-Callais decision to double down on the discriminatory vote dilution that we and the Supreme Court found,” the three judges wrote Tuesday. “And it cannot use Callais to legitimize the series of specific and unusual decisions it made to entrench that dilution."
Republican Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said the state would immediately appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court.
“Know this—in my mind, it is not a matter of whether we win this case, only when," he asserted.
US Rep. Shomari Figures (D-Ala.), whose House seat would almost certainly be usurped by a Republican under the GOP-redrawn map, said in a social media post following Tuesday's ruling that "this is a significant step in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go before this fight is settled."
NAACP Legal Defense Fund litigation director Deuel Ross told The Associated Press that Tuesday's ruling “again vindicated the constitutional rights of voters in the Black Belt, and our clients look forward to voting under a fair map this fall.”
Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation—an advocacy group supporting fair maps—said in a statement, "Justice prevailed today; Alabama must use its 2023 court-adopted map—a map with two Black opportunity districts—in this year's elections."
"Make no mistake, the fight for justice is far from over in states across the country where politicians are enacting gerrymanders on top of gerrymanders to erase equal representation for communities of color," she continued. "The message from this panel is clear: Courts must fulfill their independent duty to protect voters’ rights, not just rubber-stamp state officials’ efforts to use the Supreme Court’s Callais decision as an excuse to draw Black voters out of a say in our democracy."
"Politicians aiming to enact new gerrymanders in South Carolina, Georgia, and elsewhere should take note," Jenkins added.
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In Alabama, Organizers Declare 'Day One' of Mass Mobilization to Stop GOP Attacks on Voting Rights
Labor rights and voting rights groups were among those who gathered in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama for the All Roads Lead to the South Day of Action.
May 16, 2026
This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates...
In a show of resistance to the US Supreme Court's dismantling of the Voting Rights Act and Republicans' efforts to redraw congressional districts across southern states in a bid to retain power despite their party's unpopular agenda, labor and voting rights groups were among those that arrived in Montgomery, Alabama Saturday for "Day One" of a mass mobilization against GOP lawmakers who they said are intent on "resurrecting Jim Crow."
While groups including the Movement for Black Lives and National Jobs With Justice boarded buses in Atlanta Saturday morning to join more than 250 organizations at a rally at the Alabama State Capitol, other organizers began the "All Roads Lead to the South" National Day of Action with a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama—the same site of the historic 1965 voting rights march that became known as Bloody Sunday.
"We started here because we wanted to stand on sacred ground and consecrate ourselves," said organizer LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter. "You cannot fight hate with hate, you have to stand in the spirit of love, and so look around—this is what love looks like."We’re joining the All Roads Lead to the South coalition in Alabama today to show that We the People will not allow a Jim Crow 2.0.
Today’s march is a powerful reminder: courage and community are how we will get through this.
WATCH: https://t.co/9Z5DOblam1
— Democracy Forward (@DemocracyFwd) May 16, 2026
The march and rally were organized in response to a ramp-up of efforts by the Republican Party and right-wing courts, including the far-right majority on the US Supreme Court, to redraw electoral maps in states including Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee.
The mass mobilization was organized after the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais last month, effectively eviscerating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which has held that voters of color have the right to legally challenge racially discriminatory congressional maps.
The Supreme Court this week allowed Alabama to revert back to an electoral map with just one majority-Black district out of seven, despite that fact that 26% of Alabama residents are Black.
Tennessee Republicans also adopted a new electoral map that splits up the state's only majority-Black district, and the Missouri Supreme Court approved a congressional map that targets the state's 5th District, represented by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.
Arriving in Montgomery, Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones (D-52) said voters across the South need "a united front... to take on this new Confederacy... We know what the intent of these governors and state lawmakers are, to dismantle every gain made during the civil rights movement and dismantle the crown jewel of the civil rights movement, which was the Voting Rights Act."
Rep. @brotherjones_ in Montgomery: “We’re here united to take on this new confederacy, 60 years after the Selma March… because we know their intent is to dismantle everything gained during the civil rights movement.” pic.twitter.com/op87I4g8hT
— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) May 16, 2026
"Our parents and grandparents marched, organized, bled, and won," said organizers ahead of the rally. "The Voting Rights Act was theirs. The fight to keep it is ours. Right now, state by state, that law is being dismantled. We know that we cannot fight the same battles the same way. New times demand new tactics—economic pressure, political organizing, community action, culture, and faith. But we know what we know: Organizing works. And we have unfinished business."
At the rally, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) emphasized the need for solidarity from across the US, with supporters of voting rights mobilizing in states near and far from the South—the current center of the GOP's attacks.
"They think they can draw us out of power. They do not know the sleeping giant they just awakened," said Ocasio-Cortez. "When Black Americans have the right to vote and that vote is protected, our schools get funded. When voting rights are protected, healthcare gets expanded. When voting rights are protected, our country moves forward. And Montgomery, that's what they're actually afraid of."
AOC: “It is time for the North to pull up to the South and let them know exactly what they have uncorked with this injustice. They think they can draw us out of power. They do not know the sleeping giant they just awakened. What they thought was the final blow is actually just… pic.twitter.com/kQvixR2Olv
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 16, 2026
Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs With Justice, said labor groups joined the mass mobilization because "the bridges we have to cross are not only in Selma."
"Jim Crow didn't just come for the ballot. It came for anyone who tried to organize and have a voice," said Smiley. "Efforts to rollback equality and democracy are happening in the occupied cities, shop floors, and now the halls of the Capitol across the country."
Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Ala.) called for the rally to mark the beginning of a "Freedom Summer," with rallies at "every State House" in the country to pressure state legislators to end the GOP gerrymandering efforts, which President Donald Trump has explicitly called for.
"Let's declare a Freedom Summer and go to every courthouse this summer, to tell those legislators, 'We will not go back,'" said Sewell.
Dozens of satellite events were also taking place across the US on Saturday.
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