Court Rejects Alabama House Map, Calling It Unfair to Black Voters
Alabama is likely to appeal the ruling, which stops an effort to use a new congressional map that would likely cost Democrats a majority-Black district.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/us/politics/alabama-congress-map-redistricting.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lVA.sk44.4nw0wHdo5p-e&smid=url-share
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Demonstrators with banners that read “The South will not be silenced,” on the famed Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
People march for voting rights on the famed Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in May.Credit...Wes Frazer for The New York Times
Emily CochraneAbbie VanSickle
By Emily Cochrane and Abbie VanSickle
Emily Cochrane, who lives in Nashville, has covered Alabama’s redistricting process since 2023. Abbie VanSickle covers the Supreme Court from Washington.
May 26, 2026Updated 12:03 p.m. ET
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A panel of federal judges on Tuesday rejected Alabama’s effort to use a new voting map for the November midterm elections, saying that the districts discriminated against Black people and could not be used so shortly before a vote.
Alabama’s attorney general, Steve Marshall, said he would immediately appeal to the Supreme Court, which last month ruled that a Louisiana congressional map drawn to create two majority-Black House districts was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has already set special primaries in August in four House districts that would be affected by her state’s new congressional map.
The ruling further confuses the electoral landscape across the South, as Republican-led legislatures have raced to implement new district lines after the Supreme Court narrowed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It also demonstrates how the ruling from the nation’s highest court has further muddled how lower courts interpret the landmark civil rights law...............
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