Officials in Alabama asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for the state to use a new voting map for the midterm elections, hoping for permission to use districts that would boost Republican chances of flipping at least one Democratic-held seat.
In a series of emergency applications, the Alabama officials urged the justices to allow the state to jettison its current congressional district map, citing the Supreme Court’s April 29 decision that upended Louisiana’s voting map and dealt a blow to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Alabama’s current map, which was drawn to conform to the Voting Rights Act as it had been interpreted before the court’s recent ruling, has two districts with a majority of Black voters. Both are held by Democrats.
“Alabama’s case mirrors Louisiana’s, and they should end the same way: with this year’s elections run with districts based on lawful policy goals, not race,” state officials asserted in court filings to the justices.
In the Louisiana case, the Supreme Court declared that a majority Black district was an illegal racial gerrymander that violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
With the country already in a coast-to-coast redistricting battle launched by President Trump and Republicans in Texas, the Supreme Court’s ruling has spurred Republican-led Southern states to reconsider district lines. Citing a desire for partisan advantage, they have singled out districts long held by Democrats, with a majority of Black voters.
The court said lawmakers could draw districts to gain a political edge, and narrowed what claims could be brought under the Voting Rights Act, a landmark law from the civil rights era. The court said that challengers citing the law had to show a strong inference of intentional race discrimination, rather than political calculations, in drawing up the maps.
Alabama lawmakers are barred by federal court rulings from drawing up new congressional district lines until 2030. State Republicans have been pushing for the last week for permission to use a map previously blocked by a federal court that included only one majority-minority district.
Alabama officials have asked the justices to rule on the emergency applications by May 14, ahead of the scheduled start of in-person voting in primary elections for House seats on May 19.
The justices on Friday requested that the coalition of voters, who had first challenged Alabama’s district lines as a violation of the Voting Rights Act, respond by May 11.
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Alabama officials have already set in motion a plan for how to proceed, should the justices side with them. On Friday, Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed a measure that could allow for new House primary elections if Alabama is allowed to use a new congressional map.
“Alabama knows our state, our people and our districts best,” Ms. Ivey said in a statement.
Should those new maps go into effect, it would likely give Republicans a structural advantage ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, as the party races to hold onto its razor-thin majority in the House.
In the court filings, Alabama officials asserted that lower federal courts had “ordered Alabama to use a race-based congressional map” that did not achieve the political goals of state lawmakers, one that was “irreconcilable” with the court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais.
In 2023, the state legislature faced a federal court order to create a map with a second majority-Black district or margins “close to it.” Instead, lawmakers voted for a plan that would increase the share of Black voters to about 40 percent, from about 30 percent, in one of Alabama’s six majority-white congressional districts.
That map was rejected by the federal court, which asked an independent so-called special master to draw district lines instead. That led to the state’s existing map and the creation of a second majority-Black district that stretched from the capital of Montgomery to parts of Mobile along the Gulf Coast.
Representative Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat, won the seat, flipping it from Republican control. It was the first time in Alabama’s history that voters sent two Black lawmakers to the House at the same time.
“It’s not about the politics. It’s not about the race,” Mr. Figures told state lawmakers on Thursday. Instead, he added, it was about “bringing a voice to people and communities” in Alabama that “have historically not received that opportunity.”
Other Southern states have also been moving quickly to redistrict in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. On Thursday, Tennessee approved a new map that carves up the district encompassing the majority-Black city of Memphis and the lone Democratic-held seat remaining in the state.
Louisiana also appears likely to enact a new map. It is not clear what a final map will look like there, though it is widely expected to dilute at least one of its two majority-Black districts.
On Friday, Louisiana lawmakers heard impassioned testimony from civil rights veterans, Black voters and the only four Black men to represent the state in the House since Reconstruction.
“We fight for fair maps — we believe everybody should have an opportunity,” said Michael McClanahan, the president of the NAACP Louisiana State Conference.
In South Carolina, Republican lawmakers have also begun taking steps toward redistricting in an effort to draw out Representative James E. Clyburn, the state’s lone Democratic congressman. Facing pressure from national conservatives, Republicans in the State House voted this week to have the option to return later this month and consider redistricting. The South Carolina State Senate, where some Republicans have been more hesitant, could vote on a similar measure next week.
Eduardo Medina contributed reporting from Germantown, Tenn. Bethlehem Feleke contributed reporting from Montgomery, Ala.
